Latest news with #ofExcellence
Daily Record
27-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
East Kilbride school recognised as trailblazer in financial education
A visit to the East Kilbride school formed part of an inquiry by the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Financial Education for Young People. Crosshouse Primary proudly welcomed Gillian Hamilton, CEO of Education Scotland, during its recent Financial Education Fortnight, in a visit that shone a spotlight on the school's pioneering role in delivering financial literacy. As Scotland's first accredited Centre of Excellence in Financial Education, Crosshouse is leading the way in delivering impactful and sustainable financial education to young people. The visit to the East Kilbride school formed part of an inquiry by the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Financial Education for Young People. The APPG aims to identify exemplary models of financial education across the UK's devolved nations and to share best practices to support young people's financial wellbeing. Crosshouse Primary achieved Centre of Excellence status in 2021 through a partnership with Young Enterprise Scotland. The programme sets out professional standards and offers structured support, ensuring schools can embed high-quality, practical financial education into the curriculum. The head teacher at Crosshouse Primary, Isabelle Murray, said: 'At Crosshouse Primary we are very proud of our work and achievements in financial education. We have witnessed first hand the positive impact that financial education can have on the financial literacy of our children and their families. 'Becoming involved with the Financial Centre of Excellence programme has provided us with the structure, support and resources we needed to create a dynamic and engaging financial education programme, which recognises the impact of money matters on both numeracy, social well-being and life-long skills. 'As the first school in Scotland to become a Financial Centre of Excellence we would highly recommend the programme to other schools and hope that others join us in our journey to raise awareness of the importance of financial education in Scotland's schools.' Gillian Darroch, programme manager at Young Enterprise Scotland said: 'Our mission at Young Enterprise Scotland is to inspire and empower young people to learn, develop and succeed through enterprise and financial education. We were therefore delighted to support Crosshouse Primary to become Scotland's first Centre of Excellence in Financial Education. 'Since achieving this award in 2021 they have continued to create opportunities for their young people to develop essential financial skills which will provide a foundation for positive financial wellbeing. They are a fantastic example to other schools across the country.' *Don't miss the latest headlines from around Lanarkshire. Sign up to our newsletters here.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Moline-Coal Valley School District announces Those Who Excel award winners
The Moline-Coal Valley School District has announced three recipients of the Those Who Excel Award from the Illinois State Board of Education. Jenna Bennison, kindergarten teacher at Franklin Elementary, Award of Excellence; Dr. Rachel Savage, superintendent, Award of Meritorious Service (School Administrator) and Tiffany Denys, art teacher at Wilson Middle School, Award of Meritorious Service (Classroom Teacher) will be recognized at the ISBE's awards banquet on Saturday, May 17, in Bloomington.. About the program: Those Who Excel Awards Awards are presented in seven categories: classroom teachers, early career educators (teachers 1-4 years), school administrators, student support personnel, educational service personnel, community volunteers, and of Excellence: To receive the Award of Excellence, the most prestigious of the Those Who Excel honors, educators must have demonstrated a commitment to equity and to the success of all students. They regularly collaborate with colleagues, students, and families to create positive school cultures. They are lifelong learners who connect their schools to the community at large and who inspire other education professionals within and beyond their schools. Award of Meritorious Service: Educators presented with the Award of Meritorious Service have gone above and beyond in service to their school communities. They are experienced educators who take on leadership opportunities and whose accomplishments uplift the culture of learning in their school. They stand as exemplars of their profession and have become integral members of their schools and districts. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Time of India
05-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Government of Gujarat awards Parul University ‘Centre of Excellence' status for academic excellence
has been awarded the CoE status by the Government of Gujarat, a highly distinguished mark of excellence which positions the University amongst the most elite and notable institutions in the state. The Centre of Excellence status is a government of Gujarat initiative designed to provide a high status recognition to institutions in the state that have displayed significant strides in offering , innovation, research, and adherence to meet the global standards of education. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Parul University has been an emerging destination for education that has made notable strides in excellence across Gujarat and India, through its academic efforts in industry alignment, placements, research & innovation grants, and global collaborations, among others. This status will provide significant advantages to both the students and faculty of the University, as it will enhance the reputation and credibility of the institution, create avenues for industry and government collaborations leading to real-world projects and internships, and ensure improved placement prospects among others. As part of the evaluation process, the University underwent a significant assessment through an expert committee on the aspects of infrastructure and facilities, student base, quality in academics, research, faculty base, governance, innovation, among others. Upon satisfying the conditions of this assessment, Parul University has been designated as a Center of Excellence, a unique step in recognition of the University's efforts in offering the highest standards of quality in education. Additionally, the status also provides the University with significant autonomy in administrative aspects, leading to more flexibility and an enhanced ability to attain global standards. The status will also create greater research & innovation opportunities from private organisations and government bodies, promote and advanced learning, boost innovation and start-ups, and increase avenues for global collaborations. 'Being awarded the Center of Excellence status is indeed a remarkable milestone for Parul University, as this State Government awarded status positions the University among the top institutions of the state. This mark of excellence also reaffirms our commitment towards offering the highest standards of quality throughout all our academic endeavors, and it will further allow us to reinforce this practice across all our academic, research, innovation, placement efforts, as we strive to achieve global standards in education,' said the University's Vice President, Dr Geetika Patel. Parul University continues to make notable strides across all aspects of education, and this newly awarded status will further enhance its legacy of excellence in education. Disclaimer - The above content is non-editorial, and TIL hereby disclaims any and all warranties, expressed or implied, relating to it, and does not guarantee, vouch for or necessarily endorse any of the content.
Time of India
29-04-2025
- Business
- Time of India
10 universities notified as Centres of Excellence
Ahmedabad: The state govt late on Monday issued a notification identifying 10 state-based universities as Centres of Excellence (CoE). The move will primarily impact the admission procedures for these universities and their autonomy. The state govt also outlined the primary conditions for the status in the notification. "Previously, all seats for technical courses such as engineering, pharmacy, MBA, and MCA offered by these universities were filled through the admission committee. With this new status, only 25% of seats will now be filled through the centralised admission process," said an educationist. "The remaining 75% of seats will now be allocated to the universities for their own admission process." Additionally, these institutions will now set their own fees for technical courses instead of following the Fee Regulatory Committee (FRC), added experts. The duration of this status was extended from three years to six years — till 2030-31, they added. Earlier status allowed the institutions admission to 67% of the seats, which has now been increased to 75%. The conditions mentioned in the notification included adherence to the rules and regulations of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Pharmacy Council of India (PCI), and Council of Architecture (CoA); following the academic calendar notified by competent authorities; a maximum of 15% sanctioned intake filled with non-resident Indians (NRIs); and an undertaking that it will not engage in profiteering or charge capitation or donation fees. "The total scholarship amount per year shall be between 3% to 5% of the fees collected per year by the colleges, institutions, or private universities, out of which 20% scholarship shall be awarded to the students of Gujarat domicile. The colleges, institutions, or private universities may adopt at least three institutions for mentoring and extend their full facilities and support for the betterment and development of the mentee institutions as well as students," mentioned the notification. Head: Institutions with CoE status Ahmedabad University | Anant National University | CEPT University | CHARUSAT, Changa | Dhirubhai Ambani University | Ganpat University | Marwadi University | Nirma University | Parul University | PDEU, Gandhinagar
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Nottingham Forest Women: Their mission to return to the top a decade after nearly folding
Amber Wildgust's early Nottingham Forest Women experience was almost biblical. In the beginning, there was Before the Centre of Excellence. That was a time when the women's team (then called Nottingham Forest Ladies) were not associated with Forest's professional men's club, when the pitches they played on were borrowed (from non-League side Basford United), and when Wildgust's mother washed the kits, her father was the manager and their family car served as a team bus. At that point, in the early 2000s, the closest a nine-year-old Wildgust, who would go on to be appointed Forest's head of women's and girls football in July 2023, got to appearing at the City Ground in her playing kit 'was when we were bucket-collecting outside a men's game'. Then came the Time of the Centre of Excellence. It was awarded to Forest Ladies by the English Football Association (FA) and, according to Wildgust, brought pathways, qualified coaches and funding from the men's branch of the club. Wildgust, by then a teenager, began ticking off her coaching badges and working with the girls' under-10s and under-16s as the women's senior squad rose to the FA Women's Premier League, the highest level of the domestic football pyramid. Then came After the Centre of Excellence. The FA reduced the number of centres of excellence in England from 50 to 32 before the 2011-12 season as part of a restructuring of women's and girls' football. While the governing body announced the creation of 30 player development centres for the future, Forest Ladies' application to keep their centre of excellence status was rejected. Reading, Watford, Ipswich Town and Charlton Athletic were other casualties. Life at Forest Ladies became a blur of things crumbling fast. In the two years that followed, Forest's applications to join the new Women's Super League (WSL) were rejected in favour of local rivals Lincoln City Ladies. Forest Ladies missed out on not only a minimum £100,000 ($130,000 at current rates) of FA funding but also saw their status as a top-flight club removed, turning the challenge of securing much-needed sponsorship into a near impossibility. In 2012, Omar Al-Hasawi, the Forest club chairman at the time, promised to continue funding the women's team amid their financial struggles, but before the 2013-14 season, that flow of money stopped, leaving the future of women's football in Nottingham in the lurch for the next four years. Aspiring players left for neighbouring development hubs in Leicester, Sheffield and Birmingham. Not until 2019, two years after Evangelos Marinakis' takeover at Forest, were the women's team incorporated into the main club. 'I was only 18 when we lost the licence,' remembers Wildgust. She left to play for Loughborough University in Leicestershire, later becoming general manager at Aston Villa and Watford, then director of football at London City Lionesses, before rejoining Forest almost two years ago. 'Those memories are what made me want to come back to Nottingham,' she says. 'I wanted to come back to get the women's team promoted into the Women's Super League and make sure we have a really strong girls' academy, that we're producing players who go on to play for Forest, that we don't lose our talent.' Wildgust speaks with convincing fervour. She has just cause. Forest are a nice club to be at right now. Coach Nuno Espirito Santo's men's side are through to the FA Cup quarter-finals later this month and have Champions League qualification for next season within their grasp. And next Saturday, March 22, the women face their Stoke City counterparts in the final of the National League Cup, a knockout competition open to the 72 teams that make up steps three and four in the English women's pyramid. Forest Women have 23 of their 24 players operating on full-time professional contracts (captain Lyndsey Harkin declined such a deal for undisclosed personal reasons) and, thanks to their 2-0 away win against promotion rivals Burnley last week, head coach Carly Davies' squad sit two points clear at the top of the north section of the National League Premier Division — the third tier — with a game in hand on second-placed Wolverhampton Wanderers. The vibes are good, the wind in Forest sails. While Forest's women are not wading in entirely unfamiliar territory — they won the title two years ago but failed to beat Watford in the promotion play-off final — they arrive at the frontier this time better equipped. 'We're an ambitious club,' says Wildgust. 'People are surprised about where the men are, but people in the club aren't, because a lot of hard work has gone into that. That's true of the women's team also. It's not an overnight thing. We've been investing in women's sport for a long time. And in five years, people will know we are ambitious.' Kate Longhurst had experienced 'the tour' at other clubs before: the training facilities, the shiny new data tools, the canteen with a personal chef and freshly-made gnocchi, the hulking main stadium. 'And actually, you (the women's team) never step foot in any of them,' the 35-year-old former Chelsea, Liverpool and West Ham United midfielder says. But when Longhurst was shown around Forest's renovated Holme Road and Nigel Doughty Academy facilities by Davies (pictured top) and Wildgust last year, the tour hit different. 'When you see a Premier League club with a lot of history promoting something like that, you're kind of like, 'OK, I'm open to listening to it',' she says. 'But the facilities we use are exactly what they showed us when we came here. 'They also walked us into the first-team facilities, showed us what we might have access to on certain days but otherwise wouldn't. That's important. They're not trying to sell you something that's not there.' Longhurst was one of several players with Championship or WSL experience who signed one-year deals at Forest last summer. She was joined by Mollie Green (former Liverpool and Everton), Melissa Johnson (Charlton), Freya Thomas (Coventry United), Charlie Wellings (Reading), Hollie Olding (Lewes), Millie Chandarana (Blackburn Rovers) and others. There was a similar focus with the off-field hirings. Wildgust transformed Villa Women from part-time to hybrid to full-time between 2017 and 2021. Her Forest appointment coincided with the hiring of Dave Long — former Forest boys academy coach and women's football coach developer and talent reporter — as head of the girls' academy. Then there was Davies, who helped guide Villa to WSL promotion in 2019-2020 as first-team coach alongside head coach Gemma Davies. After more than 20 years as a player and coach with Villa, Davies left in 2022, joining West Bromwich Albion Women as assistant manager before taking on her first head-coach job with Forest in the summer of 2023. 'I'd interviewed for a couple of different head coaches role that summer, and there was something niggling away in my gut that this was the right fit,' Davies says. 'I spoke with the directors, who explained what the vision was. I knew Amber from our time at Villa, which was unique. She understood me, I understand how she works. It aligned, and it's certainly the best decision I ever made.' Wildgust refers to their reunion in Nottingham as 'this wonderful concoction of expertise and knowledge in what works to get into the WSL'. A more cynical vantage point regarding Forest's methods, one taken by rival fans on social media, has been that they are buying the league — a similar charge was aimed at Newcastle United as they earned promotion to the Women's Championship last season. 'When I think of 'buying the league', it's buying really expensive players who are going to guarantee you promotion — that's not exactly how we're doing it at Forest, nor is it how, say, London City are doing it,' Wildgust says. 'We're making investments in the right places: in the structure around the players, because that leaves a legacy. It means there's a facility for young girls to train at, to progress to being a professional football.' Promotion from the National League used to be messy. There are two parallel divisions of 12 teams at that level but only one of the 24 teams went up each season, with the winners of the south and north sections facing each other in a winner-takes-all play-off. From last season, however, the FA doubled the number of relegation spots from the Championship, granting automatic promotion to the two title-winners in the third tier. Consistency is cited as the determining factor for who gets those places. Wildgust views it as more of a process. Step one: getting the structure right. Moving the women's senior team and age groups out of rented facilities in Eastwood, north-west of the city, and into the more central Nigel Doughty Academy and onto renovated pitches at Holme Road previously used by Brian Clough's Forest men's team was paramount. The City Ground's recent redevelopment opened the door for the stadium to be home to both the men's and women's senior sides, which helps raise average attendances, while the better surface and greater pitch width help Forest Women play the possession-based football Davies espouses. Step two: integration. When Wildgust was hired, she reported to Craig Mulholland, who was tasked with overseeing the academy and the women's team, while Ross Wilson oversaw the men's first team. 'Before that, the women's team was under-commercial,' Wildgust says. 'So it was changing the mindset that the women's team is not a commercial commodity. First and foremost, it's about performance.' Step three: staff, including full-time strength and conditioning coaches, physios, data analysts, communication officers and academy coaches exclusively for the women's team. Step four: full-time professionalisation. Headlines last summer announcing Forest Women's plans to go full-time by 2025-26 focused on player salaries and contracts but Wildgust views the term more holistically. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nottingham Forest Women (@nffcwomen) 'Last summer, we launched a women's netball team,' she says. 'We're collaborating with them around what professionalisation looks like in a women's sport capacity — so, research into women's science, women's health, avenues like sports bras, but also our pathway system. It all comes back to the question of: what does women's professionalisation look like? How can we cope with that vision? 'We're still early in that journey, but if we'd gone full-time overnight, it wouldn't have worked. We wouldn't have had the pitches, the changing rooms, the staff, the vision. You have to get the structure and strategy first, then the players.' 'Collaborative' is the word Davies returns to when discussing Forest. Within the club, facilities are not referred to as belonging to the men's first team and shared by the women's side, but rather as belonging to the club. Terminology is, of course, one thing. 'But it's what it feels like,' Davies says. The Nigel Doughty Academy, for example, is not large. 'For a club as big as Forest, organising who is on what pitch at what time can be difficult,' Davies laughs. But the tight space has become a boon. According to Davies, from the start of this season, analysis, performance and coaching teams for the men's, women's and academy teams operate from the same room, use the same resources and share expertise. An example Davies likes to offer forth was her team's creation of the 'Stat Pack', a way of monitoring player performance based on data linked to the blueprint (the club refer to this as 'Red Print' for obvious reasons, considering their kit colours) of that individual's specific position when they were recruited. That creation has since been adapted by the academy's various age grades and improved by data tools available through the men's senior team. 'I hadn't experienced that level of collaboration before,' Davies says. 'But when you think about it, it's common sense. Clubs say, 'We want you to be a WSL team in five years'. And sometimes, unfortunately, what they say is support doesn't always transpire to be that on the ground.' Ultimately, any collaboration focuses on one goal: making Forest Women, in the short term, Championship-ready and eventually, WSL-ready. 'That's our mantra,' says Davies, who signed a new two-and-a-half-year contract in November. 'If you dropped us into the Championship, we have a style of play that can compete now, players who can play, facilities and staff that meet the needs. That's what will set us apart for the rest of the season.' Forest were given a Championship litmus test in January, when they hosted last season's National League North champions Newcastle in the Women's FA Cup fourth round. While the result — a 1-0 defeat — did not go Forest's way, Davies considered the match the perfect close-up examination. Before the 2023-24 season, Newcastle became the National League North's first full-time professional club, dipping into the transfer market and convincing players to drop down a level to assemble a Championship-ready squad. 'We've almost flipped roles in a way,' Davies says. 'So when we drew them, we knew it was an opportunity to show we can compete with these teams. I was so proud of the performance. We went there with a limited squad. We had players out of position. But for the first 45 minutes, we were the better side. 'If you ask anybody that day, even speaking to some of the Newcastle staff afterwards, they knew we were the better team in the first half. That shows the direction we're going.' This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Nottingham Forest, Soccer, UK Women's Football 2025 The Athletic Media Company
