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

14-19 PATHFINDERS: THE SECOND YEAR226. At 14-16 considerable emphasis has been placed upon the development of GCSEs invocational subjects. In September 2004 about 45% of the cohort were undertaking thesecourses. The first groups had been examined in the summer of 2004 and someimplementation problems had been exposed. These partly sprang from the relative paucity ofsupporting curriculum materials provided by the awarding bodies and commercial publishers.This contributed to a process of ‘academic drift’ within the courses (we met a group ofstudents taking a GCSE in a vocational subject who were unable to distinguish this coursefrom ‘ordinary’ GCSEs). In order to inject greater vocationalism into these subjects and tosupport teachers and students packs of multi-media resources had been developed by staffseconded as part of the Pathfinder. Subjects covered were ICT, Leisure & Tourism, Businessand Health and Social Care. The materials had been developed through work with localemployers and were also intended to stimulate closer links between the GCSEs in vocationalsubjects which were being taken and student work experience.227. Also at 14-16 there has been focus on accelerated learning for gifted and talentedstudents. This involves students taking AS levels in Mathematics and Modern ForeignLanguage in years 10 and 11. Mixed school groups undertake these AS studies in twilighttime. Interestingly, two separate approaches were used for this accelerated learning. In MFLthe group had completed GCSE in year 10 and commenced AS French in year 11, in Mathsthe group was pursuing the AS Maths in parallel with GCSE Maths. The Maths group stayedwith the same teacher in the same school, the French group rotated around the three schoolsinvolved. Both approaches had been successful in achieving high levels of studentcommitment and motivation but had also thrown up some implementation issues. For thestudents taking French these concerned what MFL activities they would undertake in year 11during their mainstream school timetables having completed GCSE a year early. In Mathsthe students had been entered for some AS modules at the end of year 10 but theirexamination results had been disappointing. Both subjects had recruited new cohorts inSeptember 2004 and evaluation of the two approaches would continue, although it wasrecognised that in the longer-term accelerated learning of this type would need to bemainstreamed within the schools by being integrated into the timetable rather than takingplace in twilight time.74