Improving our Work

At Life Education, we are committed to continually review and improve our work to make sure it is developed and delivered to evidenced best practice principles. To this end, Louise O’Connor, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton, continues to oversee our strategic review and development of our programmes, provision and partnerships. Commenting on the latest stage of the review and development process, Louise has commented:

“As adviser to Life Education in establishing a framework and process by which it can determine the extent and quality of its work within the context of various community partnerships and evidenced best practice, I have witnessed the major commitment to the change process implemented. During the first stage of the change process, the organisation has conducted a detailed and thorough internal examination of the services delivered by its’ local groups across the country. This review has focussed on internal quality assurance of planning, delivery and partnerships, and the findings will inform any changes to its local structures, overall provision and programmes that may be necessary. This is a major undertaking for the charity and shows its determination to move closer towards an external evaluation of the contribution it makes to effective community based work.”

One element of the review process, a survey examining how the programmes are delivered by each of Life Educations’ Educators, has revealed that within each programme and for almost every of the component parts the learning objectives are delivered as originally designed. Most are delivered to a 90% or more fidelity rating.

However, where Educators have reported difficulty fitting in some learning objectives into programme delivery, due to time constraints, we plan to make changes to accommodate these. The programmes will be reviewed systematically to ensure the areas that are core objectives, will be addressed first.

Jan Forshaw, Education Services Director said, “ I suppose I am a little relieved that having conducted such a detailed and thorough appraisal that the findings from this report supported my belief that in the main our programmes were hitting the right targets However we are not complacent and will be working hard to make them even better for the future.”

Life Education is currently analysing the results of Stage 1 of the Review Process, a report will be prepared for consideration by our local groups, which will be presented in a series of regional meetings.



BUPA Partnership Taking Off

Following more than a year of negotiations and piloting ideas, this week we signed a three-year partnership agreement with BUPA to support Life Education.

The partnership will comprise two parts.

Support for the national organisation will include advice on development of health education materials for use in our programmes, assistance with finding other corporate sponsors for a health promotion campaign, help with publicity and a £100,000 per annum contribution to central costs.

Locally, BUPA will seek to partner local operating trusts to help them with fundraising, find local business sponsors, administrative support and providing volunteers. Every pound raised or donated by BUPA employees through the payroll for Life Education will be matched on a pound for pound basis by the BUPA.

We expect this partnership to be worth over half a million pounds to Life Education and local trusts over the three years and, therefore, be one of the largest sponsorships of its kind. Consequently we will be looking for considerable publicity in the national, charity, health and educational press.

A number of the local partnership ideas have already been successfully piloted in Greater Manchester (the North West Trust) and Bristol, with joint steering committees of Life Education trustees and local BUPA staff. Over the next three months we hope to roll out those ideas initially to 10 trusts and later to other trusts around the country where both organisations are strong.

We look forward to keeping you posted on the opportunities created by this exciting partnership.

Call for Volunteers

Across the country Life Education Centres relies on local community volunteers to support its work in helping children make healthy choices. Find out how you can help.

Volunteers are the life blood of charitable organisations such as ours and around the country our local groups rely on volunteers to become committee members or trustees to help with the day to day tasks involved in ensuring our programmes reach local children. Some groups have volunteers who tow our classrooms, others prefer to act as treasurers because of their experience in finance. Some people choose to help their schools raise funds for our annual visit. Some Life Education groups organise local events and would like just occasional help at these functions. Individuals and groups across the country raise funds for their local Life Education Centre by collecting sponsorship for our charity through their own events or by participating in local marathons. Whatever you feel you can offer we would like to put you in touch with a group near you so please help us by completing the form on our website. By clicking here. We will make sure someone contacts you soon.

Evaluations of Life Education Centres Work

Every year Life Educations Research Director Susan Kaplin, compiles a complete review of Evaluations that have been conducted reviewing our work. This year for the first time we have decided to produce the report so that it can be read or downloaded more easily.

The report comprises 5 sections and includes new independent studies conducted during the period of the last year. We are particularly grateful to Brian Pearson a consultant working with the Drug Education and Prevention Information Service http://www.drugs.gov.uk/Links/UKDrugsInformationWebsites/DEPIS

(DEPIS) for his help and support in helping to construct the pilot study of our work in two schools in Nottinghamshire.

The pilot study using focus groups of school staff (teachers and PSHE Coordinators) was conducted to get detailed responses to assess the effectiveness of Life Education Centres’ (LEC) visits, including specific benefits to teachers. There were 6 – 10 participants from each of the two schools in the pilot study. Discussions were based upon a series of questions that were distributed to participants at the start of the sessions. Verbal and non-verbal communication patterns were noted, and sessions were audio-taped (with permission and assurance of confidentiality beforehand) and transcribed.

Some of the findings are recorded below:

Teachers particularly highlighted the active learning style used by Life Education Centres (LEC) Educators. Teachers clearly stated that LEC’s teaching style had influenced their teaching.

LEC programmes stimulated useful discussions, including topics the teachers themselves have difficulty raising.

The impact of LEC was seen to be lasting, beyond the immediate experience of the programme. The pupils’ excellent recall of what they had covered was widely noted.

For a full report of the findings click here

See Life Education in Action

Many of our readers have asked if it is possible to see our work in action and of course we would love to say yes to everyone. The problem we face is being able to organised visits to schools because of the child protection issues that arranging visits will involve. We can now however offer the very next best alternative. We have produced a brief DVD of our work with an introduction by Lord Robert Winston, of TV fame, that provides an insight into how our programmes work. The film footage looks at the work with a number of different age groups and lets you see first hand how children feel about our work with them.

The programme also covers some of the work we do with parents. The DVD will be of special interest to people that are thinking of trying to get Life Education to visit schools in their area but will also be more generally interested to see how our health education programmes work.

You can now order a copy of the DVD by telephoning 020 7831 9311.



Children’s Health Related Decisions

You will now find on our website a summary of our report ‘Children, Young People and Health-Related Decisions’. This is a review of the research literature and discussion of the implications for health education of children and young people prepared by Educari in association with Roehampton University of Surrey. For a copy of the report click here






Life Education at the Opening Match of Australian Summer Tour 2005

Life Education Centres West Sussex will be hosting a 100 seater Marquee at the opening match of the Australian summer tour at the beautiful Arundel Castle Cricket Club on Thursday 9th June. The match between the Professional Cricket Association Masters team and Australia is a Twenty/20 match and will provide guests with an exciting afternoon of cricket. The ground opens at 1.30 pm and the cricket starts at 5.00pm. This is a great opportunity to meet the touring side including the new star Michael Clarke who has recently become a national patron of Life Education in Australia. You can choose from a number of excellent Buffet Luncheon menus to suite your taste.

Places are already being snapped up so any one wishing to book a table for 10 people should contact the administrator Sue Alcock on 08707 702460. Tickets are priced from £95 per person depending on the menu chosen



Life Education Coming to Berkshire Soon

The success of the fundraising group working in Berkshire for our Thames Valley Trust will allow us to bring the first ever two mobile classrooms to Berkshire soon.

Bill Brindley, a Director of Life Education Centres Thames Valley Limited, formed a steering group to co-ordinate activities, visited local Rotary Clubs, and started the fund raising drive.

Berkshire as a county no longer exists but is formed from six Unitary Authorities. From the start it was apparent that the fund raising would fall down Unitary Authority lines.

In Central Berkshire through the contacts and the activities of Easthampstead and Wokingham Rotary Clubs Life Education received an early boost with a generous donation of £50,000 towards the purchase of a mobile from the local businessman John Nike. This combined with a sponsored walk staged by these clubs along with donations from other local Rotary Clubs… has bought in £10,000 to date.

The Rotary Club of Newbury formed a West Berkshire sub-group with the initial task of fund raising. Two key Rotarians were brought in to advise the group and support the effort – Peter Atkinson a member of the Chamber of Commerce and on West Berkshire Strategic Partnership, and Nick Galbraith who had been major driving force in securing the new Community Hospital and raising a £1M for it in last year.

Success in raising funds was in large part a result of close co-operation with the West Berkshire Strategic Partnership. This is a body with representatives from business, charities and public bodies. Members include Vodafone, Greenham Common Trust, the Police, the local PCT, the Council and the Chamber of Commerce.

Peter Atkinson was instrumental in getting the members of the Strategic Partnership behind the project. They also had the support of local service clubs… Rotary, and Round Table together with Town and Parish Councils.

Another key factor in this projects success was investing in two key activities, which exposed potential funders to a mobile classroom. The first was the Newbury show in September 2004, where space was given free of charge. A total of 60,000 people visited the Show.

The second key activity was staging a special Newbury Monday evening Rotary Club meeting. Members of the Strategic partnership, local dignitaries and the local press were invited to see a presentation on LE and receive a demonstration of the mobile classroom in action. A ten minute presentation, including the Life Education DVD, was followed by a question and answer session. As a result of that presentation, positive responses were received from the communications Director of Vodafone, The Greenham Common Trust, West Berkshire Council, The Englefield Trust and Thames Valley Police.

Following from the success of this meeting, formal applications were made to the major participants of the Strategic Partnership and discussions initiated.

Resulting from this West Berkshire received commitments to fund the purchase of the classroom from Vodafone Foundation amounting to £60,000.

Other funding came from the Greenham Common Trust, who agreed to contribute £30,000, The Englefield Trust donated £5,000 and West Berkshire Council £15,000 - all subject to the participation of the other Strategic Partnership members.

Lord Illife of Yattendon Investments, introduced through contacts in Newbury Rotary, made a donation of £5,000, Newbury Rotary Club have given £1,000 making the total raised £116,000.

Other support has come from the Thames Valley Police who agreed to store the classroom and tow it to schools.

All this was achieved from a launch in September 2004… a final drive is in place to raise the remaining £15,000

The fund raising exercise was a great example of getting many different parts of the local community involved; local business, public bodies, Rotary, Round table and local trusts, and showing them what they would be funding.



Job Vacancies

2 Educator Posts - Hillingdon and North Down and Ards are recruiting Educators for full information click here.