carnegieXchange: School of Sport

Sport Development student impresses on placement to secure School Sport Officer role

India Hollingworth tells us about her time at university and how she landed her job with SHAPE Learning Partnership after undertaking work experience with the company.

Published on 19 Feb 2020
India sat on a high up rock with lake in the background during wild campaign trip

“I chose the Sport Development course at Leeds Beckett University as I was already doing a lot of volunteering in sport and knew that I wanted to be a PE teacher, so the course just felt like the right fit. Upon applying to the course, Leeds Beckett University gave me an unconditional offer. This helped influence my decision because I felt like my personal statement had been read and my place was offered based on the experience and passion I had for the area, not just the grades I got in sixth form.

I have so many great memories from my time at University. One of my favourites would have to be the ultimate Frisbee match that we played as a cohort of Sport Development students, which was so much fun. The second was my first wild camping trip to Wales with other members of my course. We went towards the end of our third year and knowing we only had a few weeks left at university made it was such a special trip.

I started the journey to my current job at SHAPE Learning Partnership, whilst on a placement in second year. SHAPE aims to work with its member schools to improve the lives of young people in the area through their involvement in PE, school sport, physical activity and health-based interventions. I worked there for six weeks and must have made a good impression as shortly after I was offered full-time work over the Summer. I then went back to university and re-joined the partnership once I’d completed third year. After the summer, the partnership was looking to expand their team and so they offered me a job.

My course allowed me to think outside of the box and understand how to encourage people to be more active. Working in schools and delivering this sort of intervention work to them has really got me to think about how I do this to best effect. Additionally, with the organisation that I work for I need to know and understand policy shifts and be able to apply them to my work, which my course definitely laid good foundations for.

I would say that my greatest achievement at work is having an event that I designed and wrote the resources for picked up by our county partnership! It was a real highlight for me and meant that my idea was rolled out to a wide number of children.My advice to anyone starting university would be to go in with an open mind, university is a clean slate from the rest of your education.”

India Hollingworth
BA (Hons) Sport Development
Graduated 2019
School Sport Officer, SHAPE Learning Partnership

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