North Somerset

Gavin Ball, Deputy Head, Gordano School
Learner 1
Teacher
Learner 2
Marie Horton, 14-19 Partnership Manager, North Somerset Local Authority
Woman
Tricia Francis, Deputy Head, Broadoak School

Gavin Ball, Deputy Head, Gordano School: My name's Gavin Ball, Deputy Head, Gordano School. To make timetabling work in practice is actually very difficult. We had to agree a common Diploma day. This is happening in phases, so for us in Gordano for instance, we've timetabled the Diplomas on a Tuesday. And some of the other schools have done that, but not all of the schools. So, we're moving gradually to blocks of time, where we will say, "This is when the Diploma will operate in North Somerset."

Learner 1: We do our Diploma lessons for two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, last period. We do have time to do our independent work. We have two slots during the week. Each of an hour and in that time, we can do work that's set in Diploma or catch up on anything and that's really useful and it's nice to have freedom to choose what we want to do in a lesson.

Teacher: And that boat idea is one thing I wanted to talk about.

Learner 2: It's a collective group of lessons, rather than just spread throughout the week. So one week on Tuesday, we'll have four lessons in a day, which I find easier because in lessons when you're doing coursework, you just get stuck into the coursework and then the bell goes and you have to change lessons. But you can continue the coursework throughout all four lessons and really work on it.

Marie Horton, 14-19 Partnership Manager, North Somerset Local Authority: It is absolutely pivotal that all institutions collaborate because that's the basis of partnership working. And by collaborating together, our college and our schools are developing some outstanding Diploma practice and giving learners fantastic opportunities. For September 2009, we will have all our timetables aligned and we will have shared days and shared afternoons for Diploma provision.

Woman: Right, so where are we at?

Gavin Ball: On lesson 50... I see signs we're going to work together already. I see... I see signs that some people are going to say, "We're going to offer certain Diploma lines and we're going to offer certain specialist learning”. So, for Gordano School, we've said we're going to offer these Diplomas in the future and we’ve often... we’ve opened that up to other schools to send children here.

Tricia Francis, Deputy Head, Broadoak School: We're a fairly rural area so the issues of transport are more complex for us. Children would have to  travel further, so what we're looking at instead is both, how we timetable during the course of the day, but also how we can use emerging technologies to help us deliver the course. So things like video streaming, video conferencing, use of multimedia resources generally to make them accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

Gavin Ball: There are opportunities through the year whereby, because of common timetabling, you can bring all those learners together. So, learners from... from our school have met with students from Backwell and students from Worle, for instance, on Creative and Media and Information Communications Technology (ICT). So you can... you can have conferences, you can... those students can exchange ideas, which is absolutely fantastic.

Marie Horton: What we've learnt in the last few months is that because of our reduced facilities that is going to have very significant knock-on effects. And as Diplomas roll out, we are moving to a position where we will have aligned timetables for shared provision, but for in-house provision. And we have significant in-house provision in North Somerset that that alignment will have to be decoupled. Otherwise, the Diploma learner numbers will simply be capped at a number that’s so low that it won't have the big impact on learners that we are anticipating.

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