Those of you with children who have been through secondary school will be aware of some of the choices that students have when they finish their GCSEs. Depending on their grades and career aspirations, students will mostly go to sixth form college to study academic A levels or vocational BTEC’s. Some will then go onto university, others will start in work often in an apprenticeship scheme. Up until now, most of these sixth form options are very similar. You pick a combination of courses that appeal to you and then do them for two years. But here at The Wensleydale School and Sixth Form we are doing something new and exciting – something different.
Funding for sixth form students has changed considerably over the years and for small, rural community schools like ours it is not economically viable to offer a wide range of A levels and BTEC courses as we have done in the past. This is why after GCSE exams most of our students go to Darlington College for vocational courses, QE Sixth Form for A levels or Askham Bryan in York for agricultural courses. These centres have the economies of scale to offer a wide variety of courses, although even they have had to reduce the number of courses on offer over the past few years.
So what are we doing differently? We have noticed over the last few years that after going all the way to Darlington for a couple of years students return back home and work for local businesses or help set up new businesses that help our local economy. Well now, the sixth form at The Wensleydale School is designed for those students who want to work after sixth form, who want to know how to run their own business and don’t want to waste two years studying subjects that are not relevant to what they actually want to do.
Our core offering is for sixth form students to take a BTEC Level 3 National Diploma in Business and at the same time be paired up with a local business mentor. Working closely with the Lower Wensleydale Business Partnership, the mentors work with their students to develop their skills in the real world, not just in business theory but real life. Students are based in our sixth form centre using the latest Apple MacBook computers but are also going out with businesses and working with them to develop their business knowledge. To supplement that knowledge, students take optional A level and Cambridge Technical subjects in Information Technology, Psychology, Sociology and Mathematical Studies. These subjects complement their business knowledge and help them understand personal finance, be able to estimate and inform business planning, to understand what makes people tick, to know how to use IT to help them be more effective personally and commercially. These are complementary subjects to the core learning and will help our students become successful in business or empower them to start their own business. Which in turn is great for our local economy. And of course, if students want to they can also continue their learning at university or beyond.
And from next September, we are going to be offering courses in football coaching and in agriculture. Students will be teamed up with business mentors from football and from farming to make the learning experience relevant. We will make our young people business ready!
With the current pandemic, we are learning a new normal. The Wensleydale School is offering a different and relevant route to post 16 education that will support our young people. If you want to find out more we are holding a Virtual Post 16 Open Evening on Thursday November 12th at 6pm. Details of which will be published on our website, facebook and twitter pages.
Times have changed, time to be different!
Mark Ashcroft- Assistant Headteacher
