GCSE English and GCSE maths are subjects that many further education learners loathe to see on their timetable. Some feel trapped in the perpetual “conditions of funding” merry-go-round until they either achieve a grade 4 or are old enough to legally opt out.
As an FE curriculum leader, I began to ponder how far did we, as colleges, reinforce that feeling of hopelessness? The carrot of accessing a level 3 qualification was there for those learners. But was a level 3 qualification the benchmark we wanted to set for our GCSE retake students? I felt we needed to do more.
Higher education isn’t visible to a GCSE retake learner. It is a reference point on a map with no directions - a place they’ve heard of but never visited. Here at Leeds City College, I wanted to see if making higher education overtly visible to our GCSE retake learners would have a positive impact on their exam attendance and performance.
How could I do that? I first thought about booking a guest lecturer to speak to the learners about university life. But this presented a few issues around timing and logistics. However, the main problem was that the learners had sat through the same script from their teachers many times before. They needed something different. They needed to get a feel for university without having the “come to uni” script being read to them in a tutorial session.
You could argue that we could leave them to it: just point them towards a higher education open day and let the magic happen. Unfortunately, our GCSE retake learners aren’t the focus of these events, so subliminally feel excluded from them.
So, what did we do? We decided to build an event focused on succeeding in GCSE maths and English, and the higher education opportunities that could be on offer if that door opened. The event had to be about turning negative exam experiences and the associated connotations of a grade 3 or below into a motivator to achieve higher. The event had to be fun and not the norm. The learners had already experienced the norm and it didn’t work.
You may raise an eyebrow at the mention of fun: to have fun while learning can be considered a distraction or viewed as not taking things seriously enough.
But imagine attending an event and not having fun? We all want to learn something, and smile and laugh while doing it. This was the primary aim of our event. Why go to all this trouble and let the learners experience something dull?
So, we got to work. We booked a professional speaker who would make the session fun, fill the room with laughter, boost the learners’ confidence before their exams and ensure that they left the room with multiple strategies to revise and bags of higher education-linked inspiration to achieve the highest grades.
And then we looked for a venue. I wanted to host the event at a local university but I didn’t know who to contact or the costs attached to doing so. I decided to contact our higher education outreach programme in West Yorkshire and gave the staff there a brief of what I proposed to do. They quickly put me in contact with local universities, who were more than willing to accommodate such a request. They knew that GCSE maths and English could be a barrier to higher education and thought the idea was innovative and unique. They offered me lecture theatres at no cost.
After picking one of the offered options (University of Leeds), we now had the not-so-simple issue of getting learners engaged with the event.
It was going to be held outside of their standard maths and English sessions. Extracurricular activities are well attended in college - however, these usually relate to their vocational subject. Extracurricular English and maths events are unheard of: I was entering uncharted territory.
The basic plan for engagement was to target learners who had already achieved a grade 3.
Their teachers were asked to encourage these learners to attend and they did a very good job. Some teachers organised a breakfast club in college before the event. Food is usually a good motivator to attend anything.
Other teachers used the old chestnut of stating that it would be to the students’ detriment if they didn’t attend the event. Ultimately, though, it was the teachers’ enthusiasm for it that persuaded the learners to attend. In total, we had more than 300 learners voluntarily sign up for the event within a week and had maxed out the capacity of the lecture theatres.
But as a multisite college that is spread across Leeds and beyond, bringing learners to the event proved to be a hurdle. The cost of the coaches was astronomical. Public transport was too unpredictable and taxis were unfeasible.
While a “walking bus” is commonplace in primary education, it isn’t standard in FE. However, this was the option chosen for a multitude of reasons: it’s free, it’s great exercise and it encourages learners to talk to their peers away from mobile devices and enjoy moving through the city that they study in.
Also, the event was taking place deep inside a very large university campus that no bus or taxi could get near, so the local knowledge of the teacher leading “the bus” was invaluable.
The big day came. Arriving en masse at the university should have been like a Trooping of the Colour for our students, yet it was more of a quick scuttle with their heads down, as if they had entered a shop that was selling high-end items only Jeff Bezos could afford. If they could have turned around and exited the campus at that moment, I think some would have.
Coming from one of the largest colleges in England, it wasn’t the size of the university that bothered them but their belief that this wasn’t meant for them. These learners felt uncomfortable out in the open on the university campus and were a lot happier once they had settled down into the lecture theatre we were using for the day, surrounded by their peers who understood their feelings of “failure” in their GCSE maths exam.
Before the motivating session began, we spoke to the learners about our own experiences with higher education. A member of the outreach team at the university, who greeted us in the lecture theatre, took it upon himself to anecdotally tell them of how he had “failed” his qualifications and had to retake them numerous times before he’d “passed”.
He also told the students that he wished his school had thought about putting on an event like this when he was younger as it might have spurred him on. He implored them to never give up and to take every opportunity that was given to them. All of this before the main event had even begun!
The session started off like most sessions in a large room: the learners were hesitant to join in, hesitant to have fun, hesitant to make a mistake, hesitant to drop their guard in a room of their peers.
However, their resistance didn’t last long. Within about five minutes, they were on their feet and using their hands to devise a revision strategy. They were calling out answers together and giggling at times - and sometimes even shouting loudly at the speaker as if they were at a sports match and the referee had asked for some audience participation.
They were genuinely having fun. They were smiling. They were laughing. They were interacting with the speaker and with one another. At the same time, they were planning how to remember what they were learning in any class. Laughing and learning. Learning and laughing. A memory about retaking their GCSEs that wasn’t negative: was this a breakthrough?
The speaker made the session vocationally relevant. Alongside being informed about revision and learning techniques, the learners were reminded that achieving a grade 4 could open some doors to courses that they didn’t know were on offer. However, we made sure that even though a grade 4 is a pass, we didn’t want these motivated learners to think that that was all they could achieve. We wanted them to know they could achieve higher. The speaker spoke about the lecture theatre, about how university study could be theirs and about the mental barriers that stop some of them overcoming their fear of failure.
At the end of the day, we noticed an immediate impact. Leaving the university, learners had their heads held high - a stark contrast to the arrival. It was as if night had turned into day in 90 minutes.
Learners were talking about how they would like to go to university. Learners were asking which university in Leeds is the best and which one does a course that would suit them. They believed that going to university wasn’t above them. It was, quite simply, a natural step that they could choose to take if they so wanted.
A minor barrier stood in their way: their GCSE retake exams. This barrier was now a privet hedge and not an unscalable mountain. Their mindset had changed.
Immediately after the event, we noticed an increase in learners using the techniques taught from the event in their GCSE sessions. Teachers were using the techniques in their sessions. Learners who didn’t go to the event were taught the techniques by their peers. Revision strategies and focus had improved for them. Learners now knew of some different ways to aid their revision.
The impact of the event was exponential. Funnily enough, we are going to run it again this academic year.
Jonny Diamond is a curriculum leader at Leeds City College
This article originally appeared in the 7 February 2020 issue under the headline “Dangle the HE carrot to inspire your resit students”
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