Meet Alps longest-serving employees

13th July 2021

As Alps turns 20 this July, we wanted to look back on the favourite memories of two of Alps longest-serving employees. Introducing Mary Conway and John Philip.

Mary Conway, Contracts and Finance Manager

Next month I will have worked at Alps for 13 years, and I have enjoyed every moment of the journey. When I joined Alps it was a very small and friendly team of 10 and I was welcomed with open arms. 13 years later, even though the company has grown significantly, we have still managed to retain that warm and welcoming atmosphere. It is great to hear that everyone who joins the company still feels welcomed and part of the team from the moment they join us.

There have been so many wonderful memories to date such as our first National Conferences where the whole team attended and worked together to help make them such a success. The various team building days where we went on Treasure Hunts around York and Manchester, Indoor Skiing/Snowboarding at Xscape in Castleford and Escape Room challenges, not to mention all our staff Christmas and Summer Parties.   

However, my favourite memory at Alps has to be our 20 Year celebration last week! After working at home for over a year and not having seen some of our work colleagues in person since then, it was so nice to finally see everyone again, meet new colleagues and spend a wonderful afternoon together. 

 

John Philip, Senior Educational Consultant 

I have been privileged to work as a Senior Educational Consultant for Alps since 2010 when I took early retirement from teaching at Little Heath School.

However, through Little Heath’s specialist school status, I was already doing a great deal of outreach work with partner schools and on the national stage through the SSAT Raising Achievement Transforming Learning (RATL) programme. This enabled me to give some days to Alps to run seminars and school feedback sessions from 2008.

Working for Alps and as part of the team 

The best thing about working for Alps by a country mile has been knowing that I am helping schools and colleges understand and use a system that I absolutely believe in and know will make a difference to students’ outcomes, achievement and destinations when used effectively.

But what else have I enjoyed most? 
  1. Working with some brilliant colleagues at Alps, particularly the many colleagues who have worked or are working as part of the Educational Consultant team.
  2. Establishing long-standing relationships with dedicated colleagues from LAs, Academy chains, Regional teams in Wales as well as in individual schools and colleges.
  3. Walking into a school or college that is new to Alps to run a Strategic Review Meeting and leaving knowing that they will be even more sharply focused on improving student progress going forwards.
  4. Presenting at key events such as the National Conferences we used to run in England and Wales.
  5. Working on the development of the Alps KS4 product and touring the nation to publicise and promote it.
  6. Presenting our superb Connect Interactive software to show colleagues from schools and colleges how simple and powerful a tool it is to enable intervention with impact. The real power of Alps is in using it formatively to ensure any weaknesses are identified and supported in-year.
My Best Memory 

This is a tough one as I have so many. However, if push comes to shove it is that lightbulb moment in a meeting when the person I am talking to suddenly gets it. They realise they can make real improvements to their KS4 or Post-16 students’ achievement by using Alps effectively. 

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