Students Raise Child Protection Awareness

A group of Performing Arts students at The Sixth Form College, Solihull have been doing their bit to raise awareness on the issues of child protection after being commissioned to put together a series of short performances.

As part of their Theatre in Education unit, the second year students on the BTEC National Diploma in Performing Arts course put on three short plays.

One of the plays, which featured students Heather Tyson, Lisa Hardman and Stefan Malone, tackled the issue of sexual abuse by a parent. In another, John Martin, Natalie Reynolds, Amy Tagg and Luke Darby considered bullying by a sibling and how that can impact on a child’s life. The third scenario featured Jonny Carroll, David Thompson and Allegra Field and centred on the development of an inappropriate relationship between a male student and a female teacher.

All of the plays, which dealt with important child protection issues, were produced under the guidance of their teacher Michael Bodenstein. The students took their devised plays to a regional conference of Head Teachers at Sans Souci in Solihull recently.

Michael Bodenstein commented, "The Head Teachers and the organisers were highly impressed with the students’ insightful work. The students wanted to encourage colleagues to think about the difficulties young people face in reporting safeguarding issues and they achieved that."

Each performing student will receive commendations from the Principal Paul Ashdown.