Devon Health Studio
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- Created on Thursday, 24 May 2012 12:37
South Devon College are excited to announce that they have been shortlisted for interview stage with the Department of Education to establish a Studio School set to open in September 2013.
The schools have been designed by Edge and the Young Foundation, acting through the Studio Schools Trust, and have been developed in partnership with the Department for Education. They are a new form of educational establishment strongly based on practical as well as academic study, will cater for 14-19 year olds from a range of abilities. They have been designed to better suit the needs of young people who might not otherwise reach their full potential in traditional school environments.
Studio Schools have been informed by extensive research and best practice from Britain and around the world. With a focus on business and enterprise, they will look and feel more like a business than a school. Students will participate in a range of enterprise activities, learning the majority of the curriculum through practical multi-disciplinary learning and participating in paid work. On leaving their Studio School, students will have a range of progression routes available to them including the potential to go to university.
The Devon Health Studio (DHS) would be such a school, located in Torquay and focussed on professional learning leading to careers in Health & Health and Care, with a curriculum based around practical project work with employers as well as core GCSE subjects in English, Mathematics and Science. We believe that such a high quality new development would be attractive to learners from Torbay, Teignbridge, South Hams and Exeter, who subject to ease of travel and access would prefer to follow practical vocational pathways from age 14 rather than pursue solely academic routes until age 16. The new Link Road development will encourage wider access.
The initiative would be based on high standards and expectations from day 1 with a clear engaging programme of activities, strong discipline and employer placements and work experience, with excellent teaching and learning coaches attracted to this aspiring Studio School.
Over the next 20 years, Torbay’s population of people aged 65 to 84 will increase from 27,000 to 38,000 and the population of those over 85 is expected to double to 11,000, which will require new strategies, services and roles. In 2008, 22% of the Torbay workforce were identified as working in ‘Health & Social Work’, part of the local public sector employment category (NOMIS 2008 data).
Working with partners including South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Torbay Care Trust, Care Homes and other private sector partners it is believed that a Devon Health Studio would be a very desirable proposition to:
- Support future workforce development and changing needs
- Ensure professional learning from age 14
- Encourage young people to aspire to careers in Health and wider care in a variety of settings
- Involve employers in determining the curriculum and real projects and work experience from the initial concept phase
The Torbay demographic is already heavily skewed towards older ages and is often said to be where other parts of the country will be in 10 years time. This initiative would be leading edge and would pilot development that could apply across the country in due course. It would support increased and changing workforce needs around Assistant Practitioner roles, new support working roles linked to telehealth and the development of assistive technologies, as well as reducing existing employment ‘attrition’ rates and diseconomies currently experienced in the sector. Employer partner involvement is confirmed from a number of Care Home providers, South Devon Healthcare Trust, Torbay Care Trust and other employers.
Other employer partnership involvement will be encouraged around:
- Involvement in curriculum design and development
- Involvement in project delivery work related activity. Eg…
- a)Providing a case study of a specific situation that could occur within your organisation that students could plan a response to and then report back to you.
- b)Requesting a specific activity that a group of students with the support of their teacher could complete e.g. planning craft activity to undertake with a group of service users or children
- Involvement in governance
- Involvement in work placement/work experience activity
- Provision of premises or other resources
Successful Studio Schools will be announced in July 2012 and we will provide an update following this announcement.
In the meantime if anyone would like fuller details or is interested in joining in with this initiative please visit:
Devon Health Studio additional information
or contact Kate Davis at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
