Agenda and draft minutes

During the interview, Mr Blincow used a laptop and projector to demonstrate various website pages.

Please introduce yourself and describe your role and responsibilities

I am the 14 – 19 Learner Support Manager.  I think a key part of what we need to do to prepare young people for work is to explain to them the complexities of work.  The philosopher Alain de Botton wrote a book called ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’, which inspires me greatly.  We should take more time and put more effort into helping young people to understand what is involved in a job.

My team has responsibility for KentChoices4U.com, work-related learning, enterprise education and progression into Higher and Further Education.  All this is part of the message of what is involved in the adult world beyond school.

What we deliver is the 14 – 19 IArea Prospectus, and Common Application Process, which is web-based and has an IAG portal.  This includes signposts to impartial information available locally, and an online application process.  We have the largest online application process in the UK, and by the end of 2011 this standard was meant to be available across the whole UK, but this target has now been removed by the Government.

Kent was an early adopter of the September Guarantee, under which all 16 – 19 year olds have to have a guarantee of a place in a school or college for the start of the September term.  We manage this process online. This gives us early warning of any young person who has not got a place and avoids the danger of them becoming NEET.  We have engaged local providers, area by area (although we are trying to improve the take-up in some areas), and 95% of year 11 pupils are registered online.

Can you identify any young person who has not applied for places?

Yes we can.

We have 245 providers and 10,000 different courses to offer.  This year we have a new IAG portal at the front of the prospectus to help young people, parents and teachers.  We will see how this runs this year and re-design it, if necessary, next year. 

Screen showing example of front page as seen by online user.

A user can search by geographical area and find providers in that area. Other buttons offer links to Employers pages, Parent and Carers pages, Higher Education, Careers, etc.  We collate and present existing information; we do not produce any of it ourselves. University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is responsible for 85% of local authority Area Prospectus software across the UK, and seeks to improve the quality of information for 18 year olds.  Many young people will receive and keep more than one offer of a course place so they have a ‘spare’ to fall back on in case they don’t get their first choice, and this means that many spaces (ie all the spares) are not taken up at the start of the academic year  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

Please introduce yourself and describe your role and responsibilities.

I am based in Hythe and work as a consultant in the Shepway area.  My role links education with work, and I work very closely with Secondary schools.  I have been involved in running skills fairs for the last three years, at which it is usual to get 95 stands and some 12,000 student attendees. I also sit on education-based committees.  I am not involved in (or interested in!) the politics around careers advice and school/work links; I am someone who wants to be involved in doing things!

I work as a part-time lecturer at K College in Ashford, and this regular contact with students helps me understand their needs.  I meet some very needy, vulnerable students who come from deprived backgrounds and who desperately need help to build their confidence, so pastoral care and support is very important. I find that progress with these students is made up of many ‘small wins’. Something as simple as a smiley face on a good piece of work can help build confidence.

Yes, the Committee is finding out that pastoral care is an important part of what we need to look at.

With students like the ones I describe, you need to start from ‘I can’t …’ and nurture and train them to build their confidence. It would be helpful to have a mentoring scheme to help students grow in confidence and skills.  The College used to link with Education Business Partnerships, which offer mentoring projects for adults.  The challenge with mentoring is that you need to dedicate time to it, but the Government is only interested in progress which can be measured in figures.  When I was a Governor of a school I was involved in exclusions panels, and from that I could see patterns of what goes wrong in students’ school careers.  Schools need help to address these issues.  Colleges are geared to keeping young people on their books so they maintain the funding for those young people, but they are limited in the resources that they can give to addressing issues like pastoral care.

Does the behaviour of disaffected young people in a group adversely affect the education of others?

I don’t agree with people who say that disaffected students should be removed from the ‘normal’ class, unless their behaviour is very threatening.  It is important to look at other ways of dealing with them, and build a system which will include them, as withdrawal is not a solution.  They have already been rejected in other areas of their life, perhaps by their family or step family, and we need to find a way to make them feel part of society. Perhaps people from local companies could be asked to volunteer their time or sponsor an initiative to address these student’s issues, or perhaps older or university students could act as mentors, particularly if they had similar issues and successfully overcame them.

Maybe Challenger or Skills Force would work with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.