Future Focus conference with Manchester Academy 2022
Manchester Academy and Withington Girls' School identified a need to equip our young women with "soft skills" in order to succeed and flourish in their future lives and careers. It was thought that a conference featuring inspiring women from all backgrounds focusing on key themes would be a great launch to a series of conferences entitled Future Focus. We aim to run this conference with different year groups and a different range of speakers in the future. We are not sure, at this stage, if it will be an annual or a bi-annual event. We also hoped to develop relationships between pupils from both schools.
Aims
1. To inspire young women with confidence.
2. To hear from a range of speakers from different career fields.
3. To develop self-esteem and improve mental health.
4. To continue to consider issues of inclusion and diversity.
5. For Withington Girls' School and Manchester Academy pupils to work together and form relationships.
6. For staff from Withington Girls' School and Manchester Academy to form working relationships.
Background
Both schools identified an opportunity to continue to work together as we already have a Science partnership between the schools which ran this year, 2021-2022 for the first time. We wanted to equip all our young women with a series of 'soft skills' and to hear from inspiring women across various sectors.
Resources
We decided to hold the event at a neutral venue, and were lucky enough to be offered the use of the Grand Hall in The Whitworth Art Gallery. Both schools shared catering requirements and both schools sent teaching staff to supervise. Schools shared costs in terms of a small cost to have a member of The Whitworth Art Gallery to supervise, and the other school sponsored the booklets.
Impact
Verbal feedback from pupils on the day has been very positive.
Pupils from both schools really enjoyed meeting each other and working together. They particularly enjoyed the interactive nature of one talk and said they had never considered some of the issues raised by one speaker on diversity and inclusion.
Staff from both schools were impressed with the way the girls worked together and collaborated on tasks.
More formal feedback and evaluation will be completed by both schools soon.
Pupil Involvement
80 year 9 pupils from Withington Girls' School.
40 year 10 pupils from Manchester Academy.
At the next event, we plan to reverse this and have more Manchester Academy pupils and fewer Withington pupils.
Frequency
We plan for Future Focus to be an ongoing event to be run with different cohorts. We will invite different speakers and cover different issues.
This Future Focus event was the first in a series.
