News

What's On Your Mind?

SpeakersBank in partnership with Barking and
Dagenham Tuition Centre delivered a twelve week
pilot communication skills project entitled ‘What’s On Your Mind’ which culminated in a fantastic evening of speaking, discussion and debate on Monday 13th July hosted at the Pupil Referral Unit.

Barking and Dagenham Tuition Centre is the designated secondary provision for students excluded permanently from mainstream schools. It provides respite and support to pupils at risk of exclusion and facilitates full time provision and reintegration for hard –to –place transient admissions to the borough.

The Project began in May and involved SpeakersBank Trainers Alastair Brunker, Charles Emeka and Caroline Clark who over the twelve weeks worked with the Pupils and the dedicated staff of the Tuition Centre to deliver a programme of effective communication skills with sessions focusing on all aspects of Public Speaking – including presentation skills, confidence, vocabulary, body language. SpeakersBank's brief was to improve communication skills thereby supporting the young people to effect positive change for themselves and society.

The training aimed to encourage self esteem and confidence for the pupils leading to greater participation, renewed aspiration and increased achievement.


The content of the speeches displayed a maturity and insightfulness to some of the problems Young People face in Britain today and often how miscommunication can lead to misunderstanding. The ambitions of the Young Men ranged from becoming a plumber, an engineer to a chef. They were able to articulate a positive message about their time in the PRU and what they wanted to do with their lives from this point onwards.

As the new school term gets underway the next stage is to scale up the PRU –based communication project to be delivered in a mainstream setting, enabling young people to exert more control over their lives, which in turn will positively impact on the mainstream school as well as the PRU.

The project highlighted that by providing Young People with tangible goals, aspirations and the ability to stand up tall and get their message across in a controlled and effective manner they stand a greater chance of achieving success.

SpeakersBank training gives honest and constructive feedback in a supportive atmosphere and the students responded with maturity and took great pride in proving their progress and the benefits of good communication.

Added 16/09/2009 by Sophia Koniarska (Administrator)