Alternative curriculum provision

What difference can alternative curriculum programmes make to students at KS4? A minority of 14-16 year old students feel that GCSE courses are inappropriate to them. The reactions of such students to the KS4 experience range from lack of interest to disaffection, which in turn can lead to underachievement and truancy. Consequently, many schools offer some kind of an alternative to the KS4 curriculum to at least some of their students. The alternatives include spending more time on developing key skills, spending part of the week at college, in training or with an employer learning vocational or pre-vocational skills, or attending community activities designed to promote personal and pro-social skills. Student perceptions lie at the heart of disaffection and research evidence therefore tends to focus on them. But as well as exploring such students' views we wanted to know about the outcomes of strategies designed to change such perceptions. The study we have chosen for this TLA research summary looks at the views of staff in schools and partner organisations. And, unlike the other studies we found, it also explores evidence about the impact of the interventions in a small number of case study schools.The researchers gathered data from 198 postal questionnaires completed by school staff from fourteen LEAs, seventy-five telephone interviews with staff in partner organisations and interviews with staff, students and parents from eight case study schools. The researchers asked about the different kinds of programmes schools offered, what the students did on them and whether the participants felt the programmes made any positive difference to the students' attitudes and learning.