Hi Nigel,
Thanks for getting back to me, sadly the way our navigation is set up students would be able to find and view the staff area very easily so I can't go down that route. Giving them the course codes is a good shout but all these courses are mandatory so sadly they'd end up with them all on the homepage anyway.
Again thanks for the tips, I will probably need to look at other options for the staff area.
Many thanks,
Nikki