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

14-19 PATHFINDERS: THE SECOND YEAR182. The coordinators were also asked if there had been changes in the behaviour ofstudents when taking part in pathfinder activities compared to other activities. The responseswere:SignificantimprovementImprovement No change Deterioration Insufficientevidence4 14 1 0 11Similar caveats were entered as for estimates of attendance concerning the evidence baseupon which these assessments were made.183. Clearly these findings on attendance and behaviour need to be treated with caution butinsofar as they refer to a variety of mainly off-site, vocational and work-related experiences(and as we saw in Section Four the curricular thrust of pathfinders is very much in thosedirections) they accord with many systematic quantitative and qualitative evaluations of suchschemes. For example, both Ofsted in its review of GCSEs in vocational subjects and theNFER evaluation of the IF programme reported positive effects on motivation, behaviour andsocial skills (Golden et al., 2005; Ofsted, 2004). Ofsted’s report on a variety of alternativecurricular arrangements at key stage 4 portrayed considerable variations in quality butrecognised that the best schemes had improved student motivation and attitudes (Ofsted,2003b). A wide variety of other studies have shown that work-related learning of the typebeing developed in pathfinders can have positive effects upon attitudes to learning, althoughevidence of effects on achievement and progression is sparse (e.g. Hall & Raffo, 2004; Raffo,2003; Watson, Stuart & Ferguson, 2002; Yeomans, 2002).184. Our own observations and conversations with students undertaking work-related orvocational learning in a wide variety of settings under the auspices of the 14-19 Pathfindersreinforced these findings from other research and evaluation studies. Students invariablyexpressed satisfaction at the activities they were involved in at colleges and training providersand often compared these experiences favourably with those of school. However, from ourown observations and the studies quoted above students gave several main reasons as to whythey enjoyed these activities.61