BHCET has recently been awarded funding from the Department of Education and the Department for Digital, Culture, media, and sport to fund a pilot project looking at increasing the Enrichment opportunities in secondary schools and pupil engagement through a coordinated approach. The pilot is being led by Duke of Edinburgh and National Citizen Service.
This comes on the back of a report recently launched at the Houses of Parliament which had cross party support - https://cfey.org/reports/2024/04/education-and-enrichment/
The pilot is to try to help remove barriers to enrichment opportunities and give schools support in a coordinated way. We are doing this by building a community driven website for schools to use, of businesses, organisations, and clubs who are able to offer their skills and services to young people. The offer can be in the form of a taster session, series or one-off workshops, supporting a lesson with a workshop, a wellbeing session for PSHE, or even running a gardening club if you are a keen gardener, or a voluntary litter pick every other week.
In increasing the enrichment offer, we want to increase the engagement of young people, and in doing so, give young people confidence, increase self-worth, improve critical thinking skills, and communication skills; all skills that their future employer or college is looking for. We are looking to expand young people's vision of what is possible, and hopefully the community of businesses and organisations could spark an interest for a future employee, apprentice or student.
We are hosting a launch lunch on Friday 7th June, 12-2pm at Blackwell Grange Hotel, Darlington and we would like to invite you and your colleagues along to find out more and see if you can support in any way. Please see attached invite and share with any colleagues or other people you may think would like to be involved. We will have the Northern Echo along as well to cover the event.
Link to book free place on event: https://forms.office.com/e/a3xLp0FSUV
If you have any questions or would like more information please do not hesitate to get in contact.
email: epp@bhcet.org.uk tel: 01325523474
