Astronomical Day celebrating National Care Leavers Week.

In celebration of National Care Leavers Week, LJMU Outreach welcomed 40 looked after pupils from across 10 North West region Schools. The students aged 14-16 spent the day at our Mount Pleasant Campus learning more about what University is like, from student accomodation to the services and support that would be available to them as Care Leavers.  The students took part in a range of activities from an LJMU Campus Tour to a Mission to Mars Activity led by the National Schools Observatory, they were also able to hear about the support available to Care Leavers from the university’s Care Leavers Project Coordinator, Phil Bakstad.

Feedback from the students was extremely positive about the event:

• I enjoyed everything especially the activities and the way we were inspired to come to LJMU.
• I loved everything because i have no been to a place like this before
• Working together and getting to see the accomodaiton and to see what it will look like when we come to uni.

An accompanying teacher said “Thanks so much to John Moores University for providing such a worthwhile experience for our Looked After students. It opened their eyes to the many benefits of Higher Education and many of them were impressed by the accommodation and they felt that they better understood what university life involved. This will help them to make more informed choices about their future studies".

Catherine Shillito, Account Manager in Student Recruitment & Widening Access, commented “This event is just one of many targeted programmes we offer for care-experienced students. Over the next year we will continue to arrange a series of inbound activities, as well as offering in-school mentoring and places onto our Year 10 Summer Residential. The feedback from both staff and students cements our drive to continue to work with under-represented groups within higher education.

For more information about the Outreach delivered with schools and colleges across the UK, please contact C.H.Shillito@ljmu.ac.uk  or call 0151 904 6364

For more information on the support available for care leavers at LJMU please visit www.ljmu.ac.uk/imagine or contact Phil Bakstad P.Bakstad@ljmu.ac.uk