News
Belfast Met Tutor celebrates double success at prestigious UK awards
A Belfast Met tutor dedicated to helping young people into employment has picked up two prestigious awards at the 2017 Career Ready Awards.
Heather Houston from Newtownards fought off stiff competition from Career Ready tutors across the UK to win the Northern Ireland and United Kingdom Santander Employability Champion 2017 Awards.
The Award celebrates individuals who go above and beyond the requirements of their role as a Career Ready Coordinator and includes £5,000 prize money for the development of the winner’s Career Ready Programme.
Heather’s student Lucy Drummond, who is working towards her BTEC Extended Diploma in Business Level 3, also won the Sir Win Bischoff Career Ready Student of the Year for Northern Ireland.
Career Ready is a UK wide charity linking employers with schools and colleges to give students the confidence, skills and networks to achieve their potential. Students get the opportunity to practice employability skills such as time management, problem solving, CV writing and interview techniques, as well as gaining practical experience in the workplace.
Speaking about winning the award Heather said: “Lucy and I had a wonderful time in London and we both left very proud winners! Winning this award is the ultimate privilege as a teacher – it’s incredibly humbling that I can give something back to others. This past year managing the Career Ready programme has been the most worthwhile of my 30 years as a teacher.
“It’s very rewarding to watch my students deal with the challenges of life – they learn from every experience on the programme. Career Ready has helped us bring classroom learning to life by embedding employer engagement with businesses like Santander into the curriculum.”
“This generous prize from Santander will help us to expand the programme and reach more students. I will continue to nurture my students’ ambitions so that they can reach their full potential.”
Belfast Met will be holding its next Part Time Open Day on Thursday 8th June from 1pm to 8pm giving prospective students the chance to find out more about a course or speak to a careers advisor.