Driving Educational Change With Midlands Air Ambulance Charity

Midland Expressway Limited (MEL), operators of the M6toll, has provided funding to Midlands Air Ambulance Charity enabling the organisation to launch the partners’ joint Sky Champs’ Education Programme online for teachers via a learning management system.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, Midlands Air Ambulance Charity started providing its popular Sky Champs’ education packs virtually, to keep up with the changes to trends in the digital landscape and to help those working from home to occupy their children following school closures. Parents of EYFS, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 pupils accessed the packs, meaning their children had activities available to them that were in line with the National Curriculum.

As advancements in the digital sector continue to peak, the charity has gone one step further to provide the school packs on Moodle, an online learning management system, to continue meeting the needs of its key stakeholders including teachers and teaching assistants.

Thanks to a £15,000 grant awarded by M6toll, Midlands Air Ambulance Charity is launching the packs virtually, using Moodle. The addition of this new service means the charity’s education and training programmes can now be offered to more Midlands’ schools, to support teachers and teaching assistants.

The packs contain reading, writing and mathematical tasks, and also include three school assembly plans, a safety pack and quizzes, all of which can be used as homework exercises. Each of the modules uses real life examples from Midlands Air Ambulance Charity, meaning the classwork is not only fun, but also educates pupils on the importance of the rapid response, pre-hospital emergency service.

Emma Gray, fundraising and marketing director for Midlands Air Ambulance Charity, states: “During the past year, our interaction with local schools significantly increased, with nearly 400 educational institutions engaging with our Sky Champs training programme.

“With the extended support from M6toll and the introduction of online learning management system, Moodle, we can now roll out the education packs, virtually. This means managing the learning resources will be easier and the content more widely accessible for further schools located in our operating patch to support children’s learning and development.”

Andy Cliffe, chief executive at M6toll, adds: “We are delighted to be extending our partnership with Midlands Air Ambulance Charity for an additional 12 months, helping them further the Sky Champs initiative. The introduction of an online learning platform will ensure that content is widely available to aid learning and development benefitting many local schools and children.”

To find out more about the Sky Champs’ Education Programme, CPR and Bleed Control training or to access the resources on Moodle, visit: midlandsairambulance.com/education, and search for the charity on social media.