'Drop Days'

Planning a Drop Day

1. Start planning early in the acdemic year. Appoint a person from the Senior Management Team to 'own' the day. Use your enterprise advisor if possible.
   
2. Set a date and let all faculty heads know. Put the date in the school timetable.
   
3. Contact delivery partners such as Young Enterprise, NatWest and businessdynamics. You will find that these organisations will typically help you with the organisation. While some of the offerings will be fee based and will thefore need to be budgeted for, others may be free or the delivery partner may be able to secure business funding on your behalf.
   
4. Arrange briefing(s) for senior staff on the drop day and content; get the delivery partners to present.
   
5. About a month before the drop day, ask the delivery partners to visit the school to brief the heads of year and teachers; this could be at a heads of year meeting with their tutors to make best use of time. Arrange for any special requests, e.g. the school hall may be required for plenary activities.
   
6. If teachers are involved directly in delivery, a date when the delivery partner can brief the staff will also be required. Our experience is that the matreials tend to be of a high quality and make delivery relatively easy, especially for an experienced teacher.
   
7. Have a final planning meeting / telephone converstion with the delivery partners a week before the drop day to finalise arrangements and tidy up an loose ends. The delivery partner may want to deliver lesson plans / booklets / materials to the school before the drop day, organise this as required.
   
8. Let the catering staff at the school know of any additional adults attending the school on the drop day, e.g. business people may be invited by the delivery partners to present some of their materials.
   
9. On the day, be around to welcome the delivery partners and their guests at the beginning of the day. 'Pair off' the delivery partners / guests with tutors who will escort the guests to the classrooms or organise students to do the same.
   
10. Be around at the end of the day to say 'thank you' and record any lessons learnt ready for next year!