Woodsley Community Centre

Al Haqq Supplementary School, in partnership with Lawnswood Secondary School, had organised an event for parents on the 20th May, at Woodsley Community Centre. It was the first step to reach out to parents and inform them, of the educational work shops we do at the centre.

The session aimed to build relationships with parents; it was a forum for discussion. Parents were informed on how they could help with attendance, parents evening, and supporting their child with work at home.

Parents had also learnt how the school and centre could help them, for example, some parents do not attend parents evening, because they do not speak English. Therefore, parents were informed that they could attend ESOL classes at the centre to improve their English.

It was an opportunity for staff and parents to communicate and share ideas of best practice and to learn about barriers that prevent parents from playing a pivotal role in their child’s education. Lawnswood School handed out their school brochures to parents.

We invited two interpreters, to interpret our message to parents who could not speak English. The turn out of parents was modest. From the session we have learnt, that we would try and target parents through community events, build links and encourage them to attend educational events.

We have learnt that husbands are the key people, in trying to get their wives to attend parents evening. We will continue to work in collaboration with Lawnswood and Rose Bank primary school, to build positive relationships with parents. Our aim is to get parents on side, in order to change attitudes.

On the 10th April, we visited the Coca Cola Manufacturing site in Wakefield.

The Wakefield manufacturing site is the largest soft drinks plant by volume in Europe. The students learnt that the manufacturing site was established in 1989 and has 520 employees. The students gained a great deal of knowledge on how the bottles are manufactured and learnt about Marketing. 

The plant has ten manufacturing lines, and two pre-form injection lines.  They produce 6,000 cans of soft drinks every minute, that’s 100 per second. The students were given a tour of the sites and learnt that the site covers an area of 33 football pitches. They learnt the reason the manufacturing had been located in Wakefield was due to its close links of the motorways, which allowed their large vehicles to transport the drinks around the country.

They also learnt that Tesco, supermarket giant was one of the biggest buyers of their drinks, Asda was second, Sainsbury’s was third, Morrison’s was fourth and the Co-op was fifth. The Manager had delivered a detailed presentation on marketing and had explained in length the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion and place.

The students, were engaged throughout the presentation and had asked thoughtful question, they responded to questions and had given great answers. The students had also received free drinks. 

The students thoroughly enjoyed the visit and inspired our students to set up their own factory in the future. We received positive feedback from the Education Manager who was impressed by the behaviour of our students and the thoughtful questions they had asked throughout the tour.

One students quoted
“It was amazing to see how quickly the machines produced the bottles, and how they were labelled,”