Last week Tom Campbell (GAT Chief Education Officer) and Jamie Kilner (GAT Senior Education Advisor, Director of Vocational Curriculum) joined the OCR Launch event to discuss the importance of vocational skills, how they impact social mobility and future careers plus how vocational qualifications enhance the curriculum.

The full launch event video can be viewed below and the segment including Tom Cambell and Jamie Kilner starts at about 39:00.

“…as a Trust we place tremendous value on vocational subjects in the curriculum, and we see Cambridge Nationals as an essential tool in our overall careers and employability strategy. We strongly believe pupils should study a range of qualifications and learn in a range of styles to support not only their academic development but also their personal and social development.

Our learners have enjoyed studying the Cambridge Nationals in a range of different subjects; they’ve enjoyed the opportunity to apply learning to the work environment, they’ve responded positively to the range of challenges set out in the assignment briefs and they felt secure in the assessment process having real clarity on expectations and great descriptors.

Our teachers have enjoyed teaching the Cambridge Nationals and the materials are well planned, clear and accessible…” – Tom Campbell

“Our experience of the Cambridge Nationals and the support that we’ve had from OCR has been nothing short of outstanding. The Cambridge Nationals offer a suite of qualifications across a vast array of different subjects. Everything from engineering to health and social care, from sports science to child development […], and all of the qualifications are well resourced, are supported by an effective moderation process and all of the qualifications that we’ve looked at really meet the needs of our learners. We’re really, really happy with the vocational pathway […].

We’ve found that there’s a qualification out there for all learners and the pathway that students can engage upon is really bespoke to them, but also we’ve been able to develop specialisms across our Trust in some of these vocational qualifications, which ultimately raises achievement, raises outcomes, raises confidence of students, reduces teacher workload and creates that real synergy between learning, progress and attainment.” – Jamie Kilner