Graduation Ceremony at Farnham Castle
The Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre’s annual presentation of awards was held on Friday 11 March in the Stone Hall of Farnham Castle for the academic year 2009 -2010 in the presence of their founder and president, Helen Arkell.
The Graduation ceremony is the high point of the academic year both for the Centre and for all the many students whose fine achievements are publicly recognised.
Once more there were a record number of students graduating and two ceremonies were held. The afternoon ceremony focused on our ever growing band of students who train to become Teaching Assistants and the evening ceremony honoured students from the three OCR Certificate Level 5 courses and the Diploma Level 7 course.
At the afternoon ceremony HADC Trustee Dr Andrew Kaye, was the guest speaker and presented the certificates to the graduates and awards to the prize winners.
In the evening, Chairman of the HADC Trustees Richard Leighton of Leighton’s Opticians welcomed guests and graduands to the Castle. He introduced local MP and Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt who had made time to join the guests for refreshments before opening the ceremony. Fintan O’Regan was the guest speaker for the evening ceremony where he presented certificates to the students and was joined by our President, Helen Arkell when the awards were presented to the prize winners.
The OCR Diploma award winner was Sarah Clarke, the Level 5 Certificate award for the Monday course went to Ann Behn and for the Tuesday level 5 course the winner was Virginia Andrews. All students from the Wednesday Level 5 course won an award! The Teaching Assistant award went to Jacqueline Smith from the October course and Katharine Laid from the February intake of students.
Christina O’Regan won the Janet Glynn-Treble essay prize.
Several students on the Certificate level 5 courses at the Helen Arkell Centre and the Diploma course were awarded Distinctions for consistent levels of excellence.
2010 was a year of celebration when Founder Helen Arkell celebrated her 90th birthday with a Garden Party at the Centre and 2011 is also a year to commemorate being the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Centre. We are planning various fundraising events including our very popular Golf Day which will be held this year on Friday 13 May. Anyone interested should contact enquires@arkellcentre.org.uk for more information.