Student Contract

[Guest Wolfie]

Over the last twelve months we have accepted four mature students into our maintained nursery school on placement for their NVQ 3 course. All seemed keen to work and learn and started off well. However, as time has gone on, their reliability, attitude and willingness to work as part of our team has declined to the extent that our headteacher is now considering whether to accept students in the future.

 

She is wondering whether she should introduce some kind of student contract which clearly sets out expectations on both sides and which is signed by both parties. Does anyone else do this and, if so, would they be willing to share a copy of their contract? I do actually wonder whether it would be worth it because what actually could we do if they broke the terms of the contract?

 

Your thoughts please!!

[belle06]

i have a student handbook which also contains a student contract. I am on hols until Tuesday but could get one for you when i get back to work if that is any help. we use the contract to terminate placements if students are not adhering to it. Shelley

[Guest Wolfie]

Shelley, that would be really helpful, thank you!

[Guest Wolfie]

Shelley, that would be really helpful, thank you!

[belle06]

not a problem will sort it out on Tuesday

[Guest]

hi ninafox - can I be really cheeky and have a copy too? We are a sessional Pre School and have experienced similar problems in the past (must point out that this year has been fantastic though - brilliant student) - we were talking earlier this week about drawing up some kind of contract for students ourselves - do you have a health declaration form too? We are in a position where a future student we will be having has completed the standard college health form which indicated no health problems - but we have recently heard (from another source) that her health sitation has changed since she completed the form, yet she has not informed us of this - do you have students update their health forms and if so when? We can't really ask her to do it once she's started can we?

[Inge]

we have a form for students with us, like a childs registration form which asks for emergency contact details, address , tutor name etc which includes a part on medical history / illnesses etc which we ask them to complete for our records when starting.. This doubles as an update and info needed just in case...(have emergency contact for all staff too)

we have all staff sign an update on medical details every year with us declaring any changes or no changes, so would also ask long term student the same, our students tend to be a term or two seldom longer term so we dont usually have a problem. The one we had long term ended up being employed by us and still is on day release to college as she is so good.

 

Inge

[alis2son]

Hi, could i have a copy of that too please.

 

We are having the same problem and are thinking about having a time limit on all training placements. The idea being there will be a review before the contract is up and it may be offered again if the student is exceptional but in most of our cases, not.

[Guest]

I created a contract but it was a little different to your case. I created a sponsorship contract so we took students and paid for their University fees in return for work. On the whole this worked well. Much the same as you though, we did have occasion to review this and would be reluctant to do this again. It was a learning curve and we do know much more know about how to approach it in the future.

 

I can let you see my contract but it would probably be more than you need.

I would suggest that you lay down ALL of your expectations no matter how trivial and picky you think they are; You can always pull back on things you have laid down, but you can't up the stakes if you haven't made it very clear at the start. Once you have a kind of list of what you want put it into a "learning contract" and interview them before you accept them. Get them to sign the contract and make the commitment. If they are scared off at the interview stage then it's probably a good thing, long term, for you.

[Guest Wolfie]

Thanks for that titian, it's all done and dusted now and we're happy with what we've got. One of the things we felt was important was putting "I will..." rather than "I will try to...." or something similar because we felt it would be much easier to pull up anyone not meeting our expectations when the statements were clearly measurable.

 

Let's hope we don't have to get to that stage again!