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Copleston High School

Raising Participation Age

As you will be aware the Government has introduced a new law to ensure young people currently in year 11 have to continue in Education or Training until they are 17 and from summer 2015 this will increase to 18. This is called “Raising Participation Age” (RPA) and a parent’s factsheet can be found below:

At Copleston High School it is our aim to ensure every young person has an opportunity to access education or training at a level appropriate to themselves (either at Copleston Sixth Form or elsewhere).
Below is an outline of the three pathways available:

Full-time School/College courses For most of our students these pathways are obvious either in moving directly into our own Sixth Form or leaving us to continue their education at other centres such as Suffolk New College or Otley College. These students are fully supported and help is provided for applications made to other organisations.
Apprenticeships “An Apprenticeship is a real job with training so you can earn while you learn and pick up recognized qualifications as you go. If you live in England, are over 16 and not in full time education you can apply. They take between one and four years to complete and cover 1,400 job roles in a wide range of industries, from things like engineering to financial advice, veterinary nursing to accountancy.”   
Information taken from www.apprenticeships.org.uk
To support our students with these applications we work with Aim Apprenticeships who attend careers events throughout the year.
Full-time work or volunteering combined with part-time education or training For those young people who want to “get a job” our aim is to support in ensuring they are fully aware of how and where to access training. We try where possible to ensure that this is part of the discussions with employers when finding work as in the long term it will benefit both employer and employee.

It is clear that there are some young people and parents for whom this will bring about worry as to where to go and what to do. To support this we have developed a bespoke course during year 11 where those at risk from not engaging in Post 16 education or training are giving an additional menu of activities to promote and guide them to the best possible pathways for them. Click the link below for an outline of the course for this year which shows some of the opportunities we are currently offering.

The programme is designed to be flexible and so those young people who make college applications are removed from the programme as and when needed and new students are added to ensure all events are specific to those who need it.

Due to the success of this programme we are now launching a new Year 9 programme based on the same principles to support young people earlier in their school lives. This links into the Information Advice and Guidance which student received through their PSE lessons.