Graduation
Higher Education Graduation – Celebrating Achievement
Each year we celebrate the achievements of our Higher Education students in a graduation ceremony held at Rotherham United’s AESSEAL New York Stadium, accommodating hundreds of proud families and students graduating from a huge variety of classes.
Find out all about this year’s graduation
We have a Graduation 2025 Webinar on 20th May 2025 at 6.30pm where you can find out how to book, when to look out for your invite email, leading up to the event, plans for the day and more.
Students and their friends and family can book onto our webinar to find out all about the process for booking and plans for the event.
Book on to the graduation webinar for free here
What to expect on graduation day
Take a look at the video below to see what to expect on graduation day.
Highlights of our 2024 graduation ceremony
Take a look at the highlights of our 2024 graduation ceremony below:
About the venue
The AESSEAL New York Stadium is the home of Rotherham United Football Club. Located on the outskirts of Rotherham city centre, it is a 12,000 capacity stadium with fabulous function spaces.
The New York Stadium has everything we need to ensure our graduands have the very best graduation ceremony.
Previous graduation ceremonies
Our previous graduation ceremonies can be viewed below:
Graduation 2024
Graduation Ceremony 2024
The graduation celebrations of 2024 took place on Tuesday 28th November, commemorating the success of graduates from the RNN Group of Colleges courses, including Rotherham College, North Notts College and Dearne Valley College, and University Centre Rotherham (UCR).
The ceremony included inspirational guest speakers, a brass band, commemorative certificates and a sea of graduands in caps and gowns, surrounded by proud families and friends.
Read more about our 2024 graduation here
Take a look at the highlights of our 2024 graduation below:
Graduation 2023
Graduation Ceremony 2023
Take a look at the highlights of our 2023 graduation below:
Graduation 2022
Graduation Ceremony 2022
Take a look at the highlights of our 2022 graduation below:
Additional information for graduands
Graduands (students graduating this year) should ensure their mobile phone number and personal emails are up to date before they leave university. Invites are sent out to university emails (which will remain live and usable until the end of August) and personal emails during early August.
RNN Group will be making contact in May to remind you to do this and ask your tutors to help us by ensuring this too. We will be sending save the dates out on email and on our social media platforms, as well as reminder emails in June and July to ask you to check your emails throughout the first few weeks of August when the invite is sent out.
We also send a text when we send out the invites to remind you to check you inbox, spam and junk folders in case it lands there. Furthermore, we will also be sending printed invites with a QR code to book online. Deadlines for booking will be Friday 3rd October 2025.
FAQs
Signing up for graduation
Watch the video below to see how to sign up for graduation.
Student ID
If you do not have your student ID to book your gown, or the ID is not working, please call our Higher Education Team on 01709 722806.
Gowning or ticketing queries
Please contact the Gowning Company direct for any queries. You can contact them at sales@graduationceremony.co.uk or call 01234 880956.
Extended hire
Allows graduates to pay to extend their hire for five days, and then mail the garments back to the gowning company with a provided prepaid return label.
This is great if you want to go out for a meal or drinks afterwards wearing your academic dress and/or have photos with people who were not able to attend on the day.
There is an extra charge for this, please see the booking form.
Extra guest tickets
All bookings come with two guest tickets, please state how many extra guest tickets you may want if they become available. This will depend upon numbers who have booked.
Children
We want the whole family to enjoy your celebrations, but we recommend children under 5 do not attend the actual ceremony. For this reason, we are live streaming to the social lounge where families with under 5’s can watch on the screens.
They can see you before the ceremony in your gown and if you have booked family photography, they can have their photos with you, and then celebrate after the ceremony too.
Access requirements
The ceremony suite and social lounge are on floor 1 and floor 2, there is a small passenger lift, please let the gowning company know if you, or anyone in your party has any mobility issues or needs wheelchair access/seating space.
This includes anyone who may have limited mobility for stairs. As there are a lot of stairs, please consider your footwear.
Ceremony information
The ceremony is just under 1½ hours long, there will be guest speakers and certificate presentation.
We will allocate morning or afternoon ceremony once we have all the bookings so that we can ensure each ceremony has the optimum number of guests.
The closing date for booking is Friday 3rd October 2025.
Why graduands and graduates?
You may wonder why we use the term graduand and graduate.
A graduand is a student who is about to receive their qualification. After the ceremony, once you have graduated, you become a graduate!