Late learners’ achievements celebrated at ceremony

A total of 22 people, from a variety of age groups and backgrounds, were presented with awards at Chickenley Community Centre on Monday afternoon in recognition of their achievements.

Many brought along their families to celebrate with them and a further 10 were nominated for awards but were unable to attend.

The ceremony was conducted especially for people who had enjoyed great success during the past year and for those who had also gone out and performed good deeds in their communities.

The Mayor of Kirklees, Coun Paul Kane, was on hand to hand out the certificates.

Coun Kane said the successes reminded him of his own decision to go back into education around 25 years ago.

He said: “I’m a late learner myself and I went back into late learning in my early 30s and then I became a construction manager.

“Without taking that step, becoming mayor and all the other things I’ve done wouldn’t have been possible.

“The ceremony itself was brilliant and it was quite inspiring.

“It’s great to celebrate the little successes.

“There were people there who’d done really good things in the community and people who’d gone into learning and then went on to enhance themselves.

“It doesn’t matter when you go back into education, or the pretext of why.

“It’s the little successes you get from it and it’s whether people who do it feel it is of value to them and they see the value of education.”

Among those receiving awards were learners who had done parenting courses at the Chicklenley Children’s Centre, learnt with the Majorettes and completed courses in Personal Development.

Julie Burrell, business support officer at Chickenley Children’s Centre and organiser of the ceremony, said: “I think it helps people realise that they’ve achieved something, because a lot of them didn’t realise until we wrote to them and told them they’d won an award.

“We sometimes get lost in what we do and don’t realise what we’ve done.”