The National School – College leavers Festival

Event: Visit to NEC The National school 7 College leavers Festival 2023

Number of pupils attending: 8

Aim of the Activity

Riversides School is committed to supporting all pupils to achieve their full potential especially when researching career opportunities for individual students. This specific visit was aimed at encouraging students to be aware of how post 16 options within college can be completely different to school.

Through this, we were:

Raising students’ aspirations
Supporting SEN students
Linking Gatsby Benchmark 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8
Looking at Benchmark 7 is particularly important as the exposure to further education will give exposure to short- or long-term opportunities.

Activity

We attended this festival with our student, to experience what it would be like to attend college and what experiences they could see for themselves, the differences between school and college, how college can promote self-independence.

They looked at colleges in detail and watched other students practicing their own learning and spoke about the grades that were needed.

They were invited to take part in a tour of the workshops. They spoke to other students they shared their experiences of college, the students listened well to them and asked what “life was like at college”. The Army had a fantastic set up within the event, they had a helicopter and a virtual helicopter activity for the students to play, this challenge was difficult it allowed the students to see how challenging it could be. They also had a stage set up were students from a range of schools and colleges worked together to complete command tasks, all serve personnel were very approachable and spoke to the students about many benefits they could be offered with a career in the Army.

Impact of Activity

Our students felt it was a real taster day and gave an opportunity for them to experience college from a different perspective and speak to people.

They felt it was something that they could aspire to, and the visit persuaded them that college might be for them.

Although a few of them doesn’t want to go to college, they felt it really is the right path to take in.
This has helped focus our students as they know that they need to achieve grades 3 in GCSEs or entry level in function skills for entry level so that she can attend a range of different Colleges.

Quotes from the Students

“I think college could be fun”
“I like the fact it’s not all learning, the practical workshops are brilliant”
“Lots of free gifts for taking part in challenges”
“The Army set up was brilliant”