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Berkhamsted launches Year 13 Skills programme
Berkhamsted School this week launched a Year 13 Further Education Course because we strongly believe that we should continue to provide an excellent service to our Year 13 students, which will help them to benefit from a sense of purpose and direction during what should have been their study leave.
One of our core aims is to help the students to develop the skills that will enable them to thrive beyond school. In the future, it is likely that employers will ask job applicants how they spent the Spring and Summer of 2020 during the lockdown /social distancing imposed by the government. Berkhamsted would like our students to have a good answer to that question and to be able to show certified evidence of their commitment to learning. Therefore, we have provided a programme during these final weeks leading to the summer break, where teaching staff will assist our students as they undertake one or more self-learning opportunities they have chosen that will enable them to gain a useful skill for their chosen future pathway.
The options provided to the students were:
- Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with mentor
- Virtual taught ab initio German course
- Virtual taught ab initio Italian course
- Wellbeing/Happiness course with mentor (offered through Yale)
- Leadership course
- Careers Webinars
- Situational Judgement in Graduate Recruitment
- Personal Finance Course
- Volunteering opportunity with Age Concern UK
- Preparing for university study online course (offered through UCL)
Dave Richardson, Deputy Head of Berkhamsted Sixth stated “We deliberately did not point students in a particular direction because we believed that students would engage more with what was on offer if they were given the autonomy to choose their own path. Some have chosen something which supports the next stage of their education, and, in this case, we have done our best to offer them subject specific support, but others have chosen an option simply because they are interested in learning something different or developing their skills. The students who have chosen the ab initio Italian course provide a good example of this.”
We are pleased to see the support this project has been given by the students themselves with 121 choosing to engage with it and some have chosen to do more than one of the options.
To read more about the detail of the programme options please click here.
I am very proud of the offering that @berkhamstedsch and @Berkhamsted6th will make from a week on Monday to Y13. We are making the most of the cancellation of Exams and giving students the best possible preparation for the next steps they take. https://t.co/NWJE9xF9Wt #teamberko
— Andy Ford (@awgford) May 7, 2020