On Friday, 9th February 2018 I visited Billing Brook School in Northampton to officially open their new Sixth Form Centre and to show my support for the student run café.
Billing Brook is an all age special school for pupils between the ages of 4 and 18 which supports people who have a range of learning difficulties.
It is vitally important that all young people have the opportunity to showcase and develop their abilities. I was impressed by the new Billing Brook Sixth Form Centre and it was good to see high quality education in action from the committed staff.
Some students at Billing Brook Sixth Form have opened a café in the Centre.
The café is a good example of young people in Northampton demonstrating their entrepreneurial spirit and skills. I enjoyed the hot chocolate! The café is open to the public between 9.30am and 2.30pm Monday-Friday during term time and I would encourage people to go along to support this great project.
In November 2016 I co-sponsored a Disability Confident event in Northampton which brought together local employers in order to encourage them to hire more people with disabilities or health conditions by highlighting the skills that they can offer. You can read about this here: https://www.michaelellis.co.uk/news/michael-opens-disability-confident-event-northampton.
I also supported University of Northampton Professor Sheena Bell’s work on the SENEL project – Special Education Needs Employment Links- which is an international project which aims to improve the employability of people with special educational needs and disabilities. You can read about my support for SENEL by clicking on the following link: https://www.michaelellis.co.uk/news/michael-supports-special-needs-project-northampton.
It was a pleasure to meet the pupils and staff at Billing Brook Sixth Form and I was thoroughly impressed by what I saw.