College recognises outstanding students with ‘virtual’ awards ceremony

The second annual Celebrating Achievement Awards to recognise the work of some of Shrewsbury Colleges Group’s most exceptional students has been held ‘virtually’, with a special video message from the Principal and video award acceptance speeches.

The first ceremony was held last year at Shrewsbury Town Football Club, and the glitzy event with an awards dinner and invited family and friends would have also taken place there this year on April 2.

But with the country in lockdown, the College had to find another way to formally celebrate the outstanding achievements of students from its class of 2019.

Stand-out students who left the College last summer and had gone the extra mile during their studies from all areas were nominated by their teachers.

The virtual event has seen individually engraved glass trophies delivered directly to the 28 winners.

To adhere to social distancing, certificates and citations were emailed to them this week, and each winner will receive a BACS transfer for £50 to avoid posting cheques.

Winners sent photos and videos of themselves at home celebrating their own ‘awards evenings’, with some featuring written acceptance speeches and videos.

These have been posted on an official awards landing page on the College website, shrewsbury.ac.uk/awards, which was launched today (Wed 20) and social media channels.

Principal James Staniforth said: “I want to offer my sincere congratulations to everyone who has received an award.

“We had hoped to be able to share these successes with your families, teachers, tutors, and lots of dignitaries from Shrewsbury and Shropshire at our awards ceremony this year. 

“Sadly, for reasons which we all understand, we have not been able to do that, but we wanted to ensure these students still received the recognition they deserved.

“The College has nearly 9000 students, and those we have recognised with these awards have been chosen as the very best in their particular academic or vocational field, or for making an outstanding contribution to the College.

“These students have made some truly fantastic achievements as they’ve been recognised as the best of the best in a very high performing and successful college.

“They've been picked against hundreds, in some cases several, hundreds of their fellow students as being the person most worthy of recognition, and that's something of which they can be rightfully proud.”

The awards were given across a range of academic and vocational subjects and included three very special accolades for Outstanding Contribution, Success against the Odds and Overall Student of the Year.

The Overall Student of the Year was chosen out of the 28 already successful students. This year’s winner was Brody Wooding, from Market Drayton.

Brody, formerly of The Grove School, studied Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry, and Physics A-Levels.

He is now at the University of Cambridge studying Natural Sciences. Brody was chosen because he “showed excellent deductive skills and enjoyed finding carefully structured and logical solutions to problems from all aspects of his subjects.”

On receiving his award, Brody, 19, said: “The current situation reminds us all of what is most important in our lives and has made us have a greater appreciation how of big the ‘little things in life’ are.

“It was a great pleasure to hear I’d received this award. But to me, this is just the icing on the cake to my time at the College. The experiences I had, the progression I made as a person, and, most importantly, making friends for life.

“I believe the journey is more important than the result, and the journey I had at Shrewsbury Colleges Group will always be one I can look back at with fondness.”