Local schools + University of Southampton = the potential for so much GOOD

Last week I decided I would get out of my perpetual slump, do something proactive, and try and engage my mind a bit.

At the end of last year I got involved with an awesome society called Student Hubs, which is also a national charity that focuses on connecting students with great causes. Our Southampton Hub does loads – ranging from international development to environmental issues, literally there are countless opportunities to get involved, and this is something I most definitely did.

So what with all the Olympic fever getting me all psyched to do more I got on a train and went up to Oxford where I mingled with the Student Hubs national team in their beautiful office. This provided me with such an amazing insight into the organisation and allowed me to become far more passionate about the cause.

So, with regards to our Southampton Student Hubs, I am their Schools Plus Co-ordinator, which is pretty awesome let me tell you. Schools Plus is a new mentoring initiative which proposes to, hopefully, improve our local community.  The University of Southampton is in the top 100 universities in the world and so it seems inconsistent not to help out our local schools and Schools Plus proposes to provide subject-specific mentoring. The scheme will not only help local school children obtain critical qualifications, increase their confidence and aspirations but also provide role models who demonstrate the benefits and viability of continued education. Schools Plus is a novel tutoring initiative which makes excellent use of the intelligent students that fill the university by training them up and sending them into the local schools so they can aid the pupils.

Essentially, it is a win-win situation; we get excellent experience running sessions with school children, whilst the children gain that extra they need. Education is something I am very passionate about and I feel like this scheme can do so much good; Student Hubs have been running this project in Oxford for three years and have achieved impressive results amongst young people who had formerly been predicted to achieve a D grade or lower. The results from Oxford speak loudly enough: ‘Students provide one-to-one tuition in maths to GCSE students on the C/D grade borderline. It launched in Oxford Community School, where only 31% of pupils achieved 5 GCSE grades A*-C, compared to the national average of 74.8%. Last year, thanks to the support of our volunteers the school beat its target grades by 6%. All students who were tutored achieved a C or above (with one student achieving an A).’

Student Hubs works across the UK to transform student involvement in social action. We seek to act as a catalyst, empowering students to become active members of their community by promoting social action, social entrepreneurship and citizenship.

So, if you think that, regardless of degree discipline, you’d love to give some school children the opportunity to fulfil their potential then this programme is for you! The difference between getting a GCSE in a core subject and failing to do so is big enough to destroy some children’s futures, however, this opportunity gives these children that extra support from an unlikely source, and surely that’s got to be celebrated. So, if you want leadership skills, responsibility experience, and basically the opportunity to change a child’s life, then this awesome programme is something you should get involved with. Please, feel free to contact me on schoolsplus@southamptonhub.org or keep up to date with the Facebook page.  Come September we will be issuing application forms for students who’d like to be a school volunteer however there are also a lot of leadership opportunities available if you felt like pushing yourself. I encourage everyone to apply because both parties here have so much to learn.

Florence