Jakub Guttner “Best International Tutor”

Jakub(1)Congratulations to Jakub Guttner, who is the winner of the “Best International Tutor” in the 2014 Annual Awards.

The Annual Awards were judged by Baroness Cohen (Chancellor), Richard Simmons (Non-Executive Chairman), William Etchell (Chief Finance Officer), Graham Gaddes (Chief Operating Officer) and I. Over 10% of our employees at BPP have taken the time out to nominate colleagues for these awards – thank you!  The panel was deeply impressed with Jakub’s involvement in the wider BPP initiatives, his flexibility to teach across different centres around the world and bring new ideas to help enhance the student experience. Jakub will be invited to receive the award at the Guildhall during Graduation ceremony in May where we expect over 1,000 people to be present.

Jakub is based at our office in Prague in the Czech Republic and teaches across the ACCA accountancy professional qualifications. Jakub is a big hit with BPP´s largest ACCA client in the Czech Republic where Jakub´s one to one counselling is highly valued. Jakub has also taught in The Channel Islands with fabulous feedback from students (which is even more impressive bearing in mind that Jakub is not a „native English speaker“). Jakub is a saxophone player as well as juggling looking after his four children. Jakub has successfully completed the four modules of the PGCPE this year and has keenly put into practice teaching to cater for different student learning styles, for example one student´s feedback commented „Good explanation, practical examples, drawing pictures to understand better…“

The example I enjoyed the most though was Jakub´s ability to teach complex business issues and distil them into easy to understand concepts was demonstrated by his design of a board game for the branch managers of one of Europe´s largest European banking groups. The game simulated the life of a fictitious bank branch with a major focus on characters and stories. Virtual employees had their own personalities, responded differently to incentives, had specific problems and potential and achieved distinctive sales results. Feedback from those branch managers, included: „helped me understand where my priorities are“, „Great! Playful and competitive rendering of serious topics“, „the game and the role plays gave me many ideas for real life practice“, „wonderful format, everyone participated and interacted“, and „entertaining, lively, connected with real life.“ Great preparation, thought and care combined to produce an excellent outcome for our clients. Well done to Jakub a deserving winner of Best International Tutor at BPP.

Congratulations to Jakub! Thank you for your continued hard work in making a real difference to improve what we do at BPP!