In January 2023, Jules Wells, an Access to HE Tutor at Keighley College, won the Keighley Principal’s Award at the Luminate Group Awards, a significant milestone in an already significant career.
Jules’ journey started in 2013. Working as a retail manager for a large company, Jules found that, with her children growing up and not needing her as much, it was time to move into a career she really wanted rather than fell into.
She joined the Access to HE (Health Science Professions) course at Keighley College with a view to applying to university to do Midwifery. Though she wasn’t successful in her first year, she wasn’t devastated—having realised that she wasn’t certain that was what she really wanted to do. However, she thoroughly enjoyed the human biology side of the Access course and decided to take that further, so she looked into a Biomedical Sciences degree.
Jules went to Leeds City College (within the Luminate Education Group), where she earned a First-Class Honours degree, which was one of the proudest moments of her life. It also motivated her to teach other people the things she had learned. But, rather than rushing into teaching, she found a job in a secondary school working as a science technician, gaining experience in and a feel for educational establishments, including what they’re all about, whether she would want to work in one, and what the life of a teacher is like.
Jules then returned to Leeds City College as a mentor for six months, supporting her former degree programme and helping students who were falling behind or didn’t have the best attendance. Based on how much she enjoyed this work, she decided to “bite the bullet and go and do a teaching qualification” at Leeds Trinity University. She passed her Postgraduate Certificate in Education as a science teacher with biology as her specialism, and then took a teaching role in a local secondary school.
Despite enjoying the opportunity, the kids and the work, Jules realised that teaching that age group wasn’t the right choice. When a course leader position for the Access course that she’d taken in in 2013 came up at Keighley College, she gave it a shot. Now teaching an Access to HE Diploma (Social Work) and the Health Science Professions Diploma, she’s helping other adults from the Keighley area to make a change, think about their career, and move forward to university.
And it’s working, according to Kev O’Hare, Principal of Keighley College, who says, “Jules inspires the future health care workers into various high education degrees. She is also recognised here as someone who thinks outside her area and embodies the values of Keighley College in contributing ideas and participation in wider college life.”
Jules is an inspirational science teacher who has established our Access courses at Keighley. Learners achieve and achieve well. External Quality Assurance reports are excellent, and because of the hard work and robust quality approaches that Jules has embedded, all learners are guaranteed a purposeful, enriched and supportive learning journey and experience.
Now teaching an Access to HE Diploma (Social Work) and the Health Science Professions Diploma, she’s helping other adults from the Keighley area to make a change, think about their careers, and move forward to university.
Learn more about why Jules loves working in Access to HE
Learn more about our impact in the skills and education sector here.