Lewes Rural

Julie Dougill, 14-19 Development Manager, E Sussex community College
Julian Ashworth, Assistant Headteacher, Priory School
Kathyrn Stonier, Principal, Ringmer Community College
Learner 1
Phil Gibbons, 14-19 Co-ordinator, Sussex Downs College
James Izzard, Connexions Careers Adviser
Sam Twilley, Information Technology practitioner, Priory School

Julie Dougill, 14-19 Development Manager, E Sussex community College: My name is Julie Dougill. I work for East Sussex County Council and I'm a 14-19 Development Manager. Every partnership board or consortium that we have here in the authority has an Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) group. And that group is there to look at the standards, monitor themselves against, audit themselves against those standards and they are now putting action plans in place and then they will be monitoring those. And the key thing in all of this is about impartiality.

Julian Ashworth, Assistant Headteacher, Priory School: The guidance programme that we've got for students is quite extensive. It'll start in November with a programme in life skills - Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and essentially I give guidance on all kinds of courses that we're running and obviously, the Diploma's a part of that. And then we have a big assembly in January at which all our courses again are outlined and I go through the Diplomas in detail - what that will involve, the functional skills element as well as the principle line of learning. Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS) are important obviously and how the Additional and Specialist Learning works.

Kathyrn Stonier, Principal, Ringmer Community College: The students have mentors who advise them. They have House Leaders. We also have specialist staff such as the Connexions Personal Adviser (PA) who comes in, careers advisers... Year 9 have an options evening every year so the Deputy here will present options but the deputies from the other institutions have come in to talk about their courses that are on offer. We've gone to the other institutions on their open evenings to talk about what we've got to offer.

Learner 1: I'm in Year 10 and I'm doing the Engineering Diploma. I normally go to Chailey School and I'll come here on a Wednesday and half a day Fridays. I found out about the Diploma from my school through an assembly. And the only thing my mum was really worried about was travelling because of expenses and things like that.

Phil Gibbons, 14-19 Co-ordinator, Sussex Downs College: We attend options evenings in each school if we can. Sometimes they're on the same day so it's not always possible, but we do go to as many as we can and give out information there. Then there are interviews, the schools do their own interviews usually with the students who are showing an interest and a member of the curriculum staff will interview the students to make sure that they're going for the right course and they seem suitable for it. And then there's an induction day, as well, after that, where they come along and try a bit out for a few hours and have the opportunity to find out more about it.

Julie Dougill: One of the other things that we've done in the authority is that the work with the Connexions PAs in different schools and in the colleges are actually negotiated as a partnership board. So that means not one school actually says what they want. We have to agree as a board what our priorities for IAG are in an area.

James Izzard, Connexions Careers Adviser: The advice and guidance I would give to a Level 2 student in terms of their progression is to concentrate on a range of different options which might include going onto employment. It might well be going onto Level 3 of the Diploma they're studying or it might well be going onto another course - Level 3, A-levels, BTEC national, whichever they felt was more the kind of subject they wanted to study and the style of learning they wanted to take on.

Sam Twilley, Information Technology practitioner, Priory School: One thing that's been really important to us on this course is to make sure that they get some experience of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in loads of different industries - in tourism, in sport, in music, in theatre - so that they get a choice really of having a really wide selection of progression routes.

Kathryn Stonier: As far as parents go, what we did in the very early days when this was proposed, we had a series of consultation evenings and information evenings for parents, so not only explaining about the new building and turning it into a sixth-form school, it was also to talk about the nature of the new Diplomas. And they greeted it very positively. My parents in this area, they're very interested in stage, not age. They've very interested in personalising the pathways for the students.

Phil Gibbons: It's really getting across the idea to parents, to schools, to everybody who these courses are suited for and perhaps who they are not suited for as well.

Julie Dougill: The other thing that we've developed as a local authority is the online prospectus which is a prospectus of all the different types of provision from 14-19. So it isn't just 16-19. It's the whole works. So that any learner and parent, or PA or whoever wishes to look at it can go on there and see everything about the collaborative offer and about all the post-16 offer in an area.