Post-16 education isn’t all about getting those ‘magic’ exam pass grades. For many learners, the immediate challenge is to simply make progress.
More than 330,000 students resat either their English or maths GCSE this year. Of these, only 20.9 per cent and 17.4 per cent respectively achieved the grade 4 pass mark or above at the second attempt.
That means hundreds of thousands of teenagers are, once again, taking their next vital step towards work or further studies without one, or both, of these core subjects.
And that is where nation’s colleges have a vital role to play.
While the media’s attention remains on higher-achieving students, much of our work involves welcoming learners who have few or no qualifications and, often, a range of other challenges.
Many have had their confidence shaken by a system that’s told them they’ve ‘failed’ for not hitting that grade 4 target – a target Professor Becky Francis, addressing the Association of Colleges annual conference, described as “a relatively random indicator”.
Different starting points
One of our first and most important tasks is to let them know that we certainly don’t regard them as failures and we do things differently here. We can help them set realistic goals and draw up action plans so they can reach them.
In doing this, we must avoid the kind of discussions that can put a student’s defences up. ‘You haven’t got your maths so you can’t get into Level 3 bricklaying’ is defeatist, triggering and unhelpful.
Focusing instead on what can be done and how we can help them get there, we begin to appreciate that the definition of success changes for each individual.
Achievement is about personal progress, and many of our young people have to overcome obstacles ranging from family trauma to financial disadvantage to academic hurdles. Any step closer to ‘the norm’ in terms of outcomes, no matter how small, is cause for celebration and fostering self-belief.
Clearly, a central part of further education’s role is to equip our students with the skills – vocational, essential and personal – they need to succeed.
This is something Keighley College has been doing for its industrial heartland community for 200 years. No “relatively random” target should distract from any part of that effort.
No diploma for kindness
Understanding the mindset of our students and helping, where necessary, to challenge or change it is just as important as their qualifications.
Unfortunately, due to the stringent demands of the timetable, this is a task we have to try to squeeze in where we can, when what it deserves is substantial, dedicated effort.
Statistically, the cohort of learners we serve tend to have an increased need for a more personalised approach. Sadly, the funding model only supports flexibility through additional arrangements at the time of sitting exams, no as a normal way of working throughout the year.
More flexible funding would help, but creating a truly inclusive environment also requires a huge effort to address mindset and the anxiety tied to “failing” in these subjects.
Imagine, instead, a college that had the courage (and freedom) to say to students at the start of each academic year: ‘Until October half term, your induction will focus on mindset and calming mechanisms – not just what you’re learning, but why and how’.
By half term, we would have created such an inclusive culture that learning might accelerate out of that in a completely different way, and one that might actually lead to improved achievement rates.
But there’s no funding or accreditation for mindfulness or self-regulation, so they are effectively treated as luxuries.
We are trying to get our learners, especially those who may have suffered some setbacks, to find themselves again and tune in to the best version of themselves. But the system we operate in is far too transactional to allow us enough space to do that.
Like so many colleges, we will continue to do all we can within our constraints to create that supportive platform for all our students.
As the saying goes, perfection should not be the enemy of good. It would be handy if policy wasn’t its enemy either.
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