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Student of the Year Winners Unveiled at Glittering Ceremony

Published on 07/07/2025 by DBUCK

Awards news

The B&FC Student of the Year (SOTY) 2025 winners were unveiled at a glittering celebration at the Grand Hotel on Friday afternoon.

This showcase event was attended by around 180 colleagues, partners, students and guests who got to hear inspiring individual success stories and to create some fantastic memories.

This is the first time SOTY has been held in-person since the pandemic and it opened with an inspiring interactive rendition of ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ from Level 3 Performing Arts learners (pictured). This inluded a stunning solo performance from Anastasia Ovchynnykova, who was also nominated for Adult FE Learner of the Year.

Attendees were welcomed with opening remarks from Alun Francis who ran through some of the many highlights of the past academic year at B&FC.

Afternoon Tea was then served up as our awards winners were finally revealed.

Co-presenters Rachel Crane, Vice Principal Strategy, Student and Special Projects and Peter Greenall, Vice Principal for Higher Education, expertly led the audience through our shortlists and prize winners across 14 ‘Gold Awards’.

These are for young learners (under 19) who stood out for a wide range of reasons after meeting an initial benchmark of excellent attendance, functional skills and Silver on their Personal Development Plans.

This was the last SOTY event for Nigel Brown, Director of Students, before he retires in August – and he was given the honour of revealing our three main prize-winners for 2025.

Nigel told the audience: “My role gives me the privileged opportunity to meet hundreds of students each week. I am reminded every day how resilient young people are – and the challenges they overcome.”

“You should all be immensely proud. Congratulations to all of you – everyone in the room is a winner today.”

Our three main SOTY prize winners who were (pictured, left to right) Thomas Walton, Jeffrey Adams and Danielle Ashmore.

Nigel then announced our three main prize winners who were (pictured, left to right) Thomas Walton, Young SOTY 2025 (16-18), Electrical and Electronic Engineering, with Jeffrey Adams, HE SOTY 2025, Network Engineering Systems BSc, plus Danielle Ashmore, Adult SOTY 2025, Access to HE, Nursing and Midwifery.

A heartfelt ‘thank you’ goes to everyone who played their part in making this showcase event a huge success. That includes all our nominating tutors, proud parents, employers and partners.