Important Information for Year 11 Students

17 November, 2017 

Dear Parent/Carer, 

As a school we continually track and monitor our students’ progress. This is particularly important at year 11 as we are so close to the students completing their GCSE programmes of study. This year the RE department are completing a legacy WJEC GCSE syllabus and the majority of our students did not do well at this in the year 10 50% unit. Current tracking and predictions indicate that a significant majority of students will not achieve this particular RE qualification. 

The solution we have reached is to offer the opportunity of achieving another Level 2 qualification, the BTEC Certificate in Personal and Social Development (It is referred to as SWEET). This will be the new course for anyone who is now predicted to achieve below a Grade D. This is a GSCE equivalent, if the student completes the required amount of units, and there is no examination. This certificate is a well-resourced package focusing on issues and challenges that young people face today and links in very well with the Welsh Government’s flagship Welsh Baccalaureate qualification. We are able to offer this qualification instead of the RE provision as the programme is literacy/PSE based. 

Students will benefit from this course and should find the research required interesting and stimulating. If you would like to find out more about it then there is information online; please go to: www.portaltraining .co.uk. All students have been spoken to by their RE teacher or in assembly and can see the rationale in running this second course. We also run it last year and achieved 100% success with all the students who completed the course. 

We will monitor the progress of this BTEC half termly, in the same way as we monitor other courses. 

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information, 

Yours faithfully, 

 Jennifer Ford