Case Study 72
WP Practitioner: John Oddy, Camborne, Pool and Redruth Excellence Cluster
Case Study: Excellence Cluster Conferences
CAMBORNE, POOL AND REDRUTH EXCELLENCE CLUSTER CONFERENCES
What is the Issue?
Context
Camborne, Pool and Redruth make up an area of north-west Cornwall which contains much in the way of human potential across the generations but is experiencing serious economic decline. When young people look out at their prospects, they do not see much for them in the way of work or educational opportunity. Although the Combined Universities in Cornwall initiative, led by the University of Plymouth, is beginning to make a positive difference, it is still early days and there is still little locally accessible Higher Education (HE) available to them.
Over the past four years, the former Education Action Zone (EAZ) (now the Excellence Cluster) for the area has run a series of highly successful Higher Education Conferences for students of local schools and colleges to open up new horizons and possibilities for the area’s young people. This case study demonstrates that the connection between activities to raise educational and career aspirations among young people and, consequentially, an increase in their motivation to improve achievement is quite marked. The Conferences can start a process of turning attitudes to further learning around and can therefore make an impact on achievement.
What did you do?
Since 2001, in January / February, the Excellence Cluster and, before that the EAZ, has held an annual Conference for school and Further Education (FE) college students which enables them to come into contact with HE providers from across the South West and beyond.
Originally based at Duchy College, in 2005 the venue moved to the innovative and high tech ‘Classroom for the Future’ in Camborne, a local resource for education which is inspiring for young people and their teachers alike. The Conferences bring in ninety young people from each targeted school and college for an intensive hour and a half slot where they can meet staff and Student Ambassadors from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Plymouth, Bristol, West of England, Exeter, Bath and the College of St Mark and St John in Plymouth.
The format consists of 45 minutes in which the young people are able to chat through what they may want to do in small groups facilitated by the HE representatives. Exploring what HE is like, what living away from home can involve and offer, and what opportunities HE can give form key aspects of these discussions. The involvement of the real experiences of the Student Ambassadors in this is important for giving both authenticity to the inputs and inspiration to the young people. This is then followed up by 45 minutes for contacts to be made with specific HE Institutions. HE staff make full use of the technological resources of the ‘Classroom’ to communicate the value of learning and higher education for personal and career development. Set in an inspiring and imaginative ‘Earth Station’, resources include full internet access, wireless lap top computers and access to two astronomical telescopes.
Given the rural nature of the area and consequent travel issues, bus transport is laid on – no mean feat, when, in 2005, over 500 young people took part in these opportunity slots over the four days of the Conference, together with 25 school teachers and learning support staff.
A crucial aspect of the Conferences has been the engagement of parents and carers, and even more extended parts of the family, when they come in for evening sessions. Most of the parents and carers will have had no personal experience of HE themselves and their perceptions are, likely as not, to be drawn from media stories of cost and debt. When parents have the chance to chat to Student Ambassadors and begin to realise that costs need not be so much of a barrier, that HE can be flexible and even locally accessible and that their children really do have the potential to take advantage of these opportunities, attitudes begin to change to the positive. This has to be significant in terms of providing back-up to the young people’s work to improve their attainment and grab hold of new futures for themselves. More than a hundred parents and carers took part in 2005.
How this activity made a difference
- School students attending the Conferences haven’t been compared to those from other schools not in the EAZ.. This is, in part, because these schools are in more affluent areas and have better results to start with. However, targets for results and progression have been kept track of and the students attending the Conferences have almost all done at least as well as their target and often better.
- The impact on attainment of the Camborne, Pool and Redruth Conferences would be hard to measure quantitatively as they form one part of a highly complex pattern of influencing factors However, personal stories can give an insight into the power of these events to change attitudes to educational achievement.
- There is the example of the young woman, bright at Maths, predicted to gain A * in Maths and Science, who had been planning progression to a craft course in local FE. She had turned down the offer of an interview with the Head of Sixth to discuss A Levels. After attending the Conference, she fed back to her school that she now wanted this interview and recognised she would need to work really hard at her English, for example, and that she wanted to commit herself to trying for HE.
- Another school reported that a young man who had gone along to the Conference with perhaps not the best attitude to his school work was now showing a complete change of attitude, talking about how he now knew what he wanted to do, that he would have to ‘pull his finger out’ so as to begin to fight for his opportunities for the future.
- The Camborne, Pool and Redruth Conferences are now keenly anticipated by the participating universities.
Subsequent or Ongoing Work
It is intended that the Conferences will continue into 2006 and beyond. Their shape and content is continually evaluated and developed, particularly in the light of feedback from young people themselves.
The further growth of the Combined Universities in Cornwall initiative, with its development of more HE opportunities in Cornwall’s FE colleges will increase the scope for local access to HE and could therefore contribute to enabling young people, should they wish it, to remain in the county and to reinvest their new skills and knowledge in the Cornwall economy rather than moving away and perhaps not returning.
The Conferences can therefore play a key role in stimulating this ‘demand’ side of the HE equation by promoting higher aspirations and, therefore, increased motivation to improve educational attainment to the level where realistic applications to HE, locally as well as elsewhere, can be pursued.
Contact Details
John Oddy, Camborne, Pool and Redruth Excellence Cluster
Email: dj.oddy@virgin.net
