Over the last few weeks, we’ve been working at the ContinU Plus Academy (CPA) in Kidderminster. CPA is an alternative provision free school, and provides high quality education for 11-17 year olds, Opened in September 2013, the school has capacity for 90 pupils, who for a wide variety of reasons have disengaged or experienced difficulties in mainstream education.
Our Life Skills programme is based around beauty therapy and is taught by our two qualified beauty therapists in the Wellbeing Crew.
The purpose of Life Skills is twofold.
Firstly, teaching pupils the fundamentals of manicures, pedicures, skincare and make-up can help to enhance their feelings of self-esteem and increase confidence levels. Once these are in place, the students start to engage more with their peers.
Secondly, Life Skills can guide the students towards a career in the beauty sector, whereas they may not have had any inclination or career aspirations beforehand.
As well as the practical learning, all students are assessed after they’ve taken the courses, and issued with an in-house certificate of completion. Although at the present time, the Life Skills beauty courses are not accredited, we are in the process of re-registering with the Beauty Guild, which will open up potential employment opportunities for the students within salons and spas.
The students are also asked to take part in Enterprise, where they are expected to have a grassroots understanding of starting and running a business, including creating a business plan with the support from the school and ourselves.
We would love to deliver more Life Skills programmes into schools throughout the West Midlands and Staffordshire to groups of students who have perhaps lost their way and are struggling with the traditional academic process.
If you would like to talk to us about visiting your school, please get in touch at info@thewellbeingcrew.co.uk and let’s start your students’ journey on a positive career path that they will enjoy and benefit from.
