I’m currently working on one of the strategic projects called FE to HE, where we focus on supporting students attending further education (FE) colleges. This strategic project allows us to tailor our work to FE students’ specific needs, which can differ from secondary school students. The project aims to understand this group better, including the schools vs. college divide, provide resources, events and content to better engage FE students, and support the transition of these learners into higher education (HE) study.
Our research has highlighted that sixth form students are 35% more likely than further education college students to apply to university, and this is a big driver for me to get involved and help change this. It’s been great to work with more students to help provide them with information on higher education.
Having attended an FE college, I was never introduced to higher education that much, in the form of events or talks. There was little support with personal statement writing and with the academic side e.g., no revision classes, so I found it much harder to achieve the grades I needed. This experience has motivated me with this project, and I understand the importance in tailoring our approach to support further education college students with their next steps.
The plan is to meet learners in Year 1 of college with the ‘My HE Journey’ intervention that I worked on during my internship at Hello Future, so it’s great to use something I created. This workshop is designed to introduce HE and provide learners with greater knowledge and insight into HE from a first-hand account. Following this, learners will have 2 more interventions, leading to them participating in the ‘Preparing for Student Life Day’ in Year 2. This will be a full day of Hello Future and partner activities, preparing students who will be transitioning to HE over the summer.
A big challenge has been getting this project up and running as it’s still being created. It’s been great to try and come up with new activities and workshops that we can use to lead up to our ‘Preparing for Student Life Day’.
We are hoping to launch the programme this academic year and start booking in our ‘Preparing for Student Life Day’ with colleges. We then hope to start the other interventions in the following year.
If you have any questions about the project or about Hello Future in general, email us at hellofuture@cumbria.ac.uk.