Collaborative Approaches to 14-19 Provision - Communities and ...

14-19 PATHFINDERS: THE SECOND YEARadvice and guidance to all students. Connexions and the LEA are currently embarking on aprogramme which will provide bespoke advice to individual schools on how they candevelop their overall programmes. The schools visited as part of our evaluation seemedconfident that they were providing adequate advice and guidance and were satisfied withConnexions support, while recognising that restructuring of the Connexions service createdsome difficulties.Summary and emerging issues310. Hampshire is a relatively high-performing area on conventional educationalperformance measures, with high levels of progression, including onto academic coursespost-16 and higher education after that. Thus the issues of achievement, participation andprogression which lie at the heart of the 14-19 reform agenda might appear less pressing thanin other areas visited as part of this evaluation.311. However, it was recognised that there was a substantial minority of learners for whomthe largely academic curriculum diet was not appropriate, while others might prefer a moremixed diet. As with all areas, there are also communities in the towns and more rural areas,where aspirations, achievement and progression remain issues. Thus there had been a majorthrust to develop vocational learning. This was being achieved through greatly increasedcollaboration between partners in the two partnership areas and through a mix of strategiesincluding establishing skills centres, using mobile units, developing e-learning andstrengthening school-college links.312. These developments had begun to substantially broaden curriculum choices forstudents. The pathfinder had concluded that there was no obvious, single solution to issues ofrurality – transport could be expensive and raised issues of supervision during journeys.However, it was contended that the combination of approaches was able to overcome manyof the barriers to increasing choice.313. It was accepted that two issues which needed greater attention were employerinvolvement and post-16 development. Employer involvement was particularly limited inEast Hampshire where there are no large employers. Attempts to forge links through97