Stone Soup Sixth Form Pilot

Dear Parent/Carer,

We are excited to tell you about an opportunity for our year 11 students to attend our very first Sixth form. We have spoken to our year 11 students and from this research and student surveys we have decided to pilot this idea from September 2021.

We are starting small, and if this is successful, we will hope to grow this idea until the point that students can stay with us full time after the end of year 11, although this may be further down the line.

We will not receive any funding for our sixth form. We are doing this because it is the right thing to do. We believe that some of our year 11 students still need support even after they have left to help them succeed. Nationally students from alternative provisions can struggle and drop out because they just do not receive the same sort of support once in college or work as we give them in school. Nationally only 59% of students from alternative provision manage to stay in education training and work compared to 94% from mainstream. We aim to change that statistic for our young people.

To start our pilot, we are planning to open to students on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.  

Although we cannot offer qualifications at this point we can offer support, whether your child is in work, college or training. During this time staff will work closely with your child to discuss and monitor progress throughout the year. We will also give guidance, including life skills lessons on topics such as credit, debts and money management etc, these will be supplemented with advice on careers from myself and Futures.

We will also provide space for them to study and print off work and even support with maths and English, if they are planning to resit or just a friendly face and an ear to off load any issues that they may be having.

The Sixth Form will be divided into three categories:

• Coursework Support / Revision sessions
• LifeSkills sessions
• Drop ins 

We will be sharing this information with our students. Joining our sixth form comes at no cost to you or your child and we hope that you will support us with this idea.

Please contact me if you have further questions.

Kind regards

Jordan Senior

Head of Careers/Personal Coach