The AoC Beacon Awards celebrate the best and most innovative practice among UK further education (FE) colleges. The awards highlight excellence and help share best practice across the sector.
Edge are proud sponsors of the Award for Excellence in Real World Learning. The award celebrates colleges which have developed high quality practical teaching and learning approaches that give students experiences that are real, meaningful, challenging, stretching and life changing.
The winners of the 2020/21 Award for Excellence in Real World Learning were recently joined by Jane Samuels, Edge's Director of Projects and Operations to host a best practice webinar in order to showcase and share their initiatives and projects with interested colleges and sector organisations.
Winner - Strode College
Working with university academics and the UK’s most accomplished experts to understand the buildings and landscapes around you is an excellent and practical way to engage with the past. When it also enables you to gain the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed to communicate this passion to the public and to flourish in a meaningful and rewarding career, the possibilities are simply endless. This is the exceptional opportunity offered by the Historic Environment Advice Assistant (HEAA) Higher Apprenticeship. The successful initiative outlined in this submission demonstrates how one small college, in close partnership with Historic England, has turned a brand new, degree-level apprenticeship standard into a vibrant and high quality experience for employees from all over the country. Following an innovative curriculum based on a series of week-long block release workshops and learning from inspirational tutors, apprentices on this programme can make a real difference in the world of history, heritage and archaeology and help bring this important area of work into the lives of many, whilst developing significantly as individuals and professional colleagues. This challenging, yet immensely imaginative apprenticeship has seen the best from education and industry combine into a strong relationship that benefits the sector as a whole.
Highly Commended - Lancaster & Morecambe College
The Morecambe Bay Curriculum is a positive response to the climate crisis challenge. To achieve this objective a new birth to 25yrs curriculum is live (pilots) and is being co-constructed by the Bay education stakeholders and an environmental education charity. These include Early Years settings, schools, including special schools, residential care settings, colleges, university partners, Local Enterprise Partnership and the Chamber of Commerce. The curriculum is described as the Morecambe Bay Curriculum (MBC). This is a place-based curriculum that is culturally and contextually situated in the natural environment of the Bay and is informed by the impact of human activity in the area. The curriculum seeks to provide an integrated education, health, social, environment and economic framework for Morecambe Bay. The local stories (past, present, future) that connect people to their place are being used as a vehicle to reimagining future sustainable solutions to living in Morecambe Bay. This is a truly equitable initiative that recognises the equality and diversity of all living things including the place. The key outcomes of the curriculum are to
- protect and improve the health of the ecosystem
- improve the psychological and physical health and well-being of the community
- create new green economies
- stimulate green entrepreneurship
