Corby Technical School: A Case Study

Corby Technical School introduced vocational and technical qualifications using iAchieve.

In January 2018, Daniel Rogers, Lead Teacher of PE and Vocational Studies at Corby Technical School switched a group of Year 11 learners from a variety of other vocational and academic courses to the NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Health and Fitness using iAchieve. This was the first step in introducing a variety of vocational and technical qualifications to the curriculum a CTS.

With the first cohort of learners that Daniel switched to the NCFE Health and Fitness course using iAchieve, he succeeded in achieving an 88% success rate, including 50% of those learners achieve a distinction. Daniel said:

“I wouldn’t even have attempted to run the course in this way without iAchieve.  It made running the course so much easier; it reduced my planning time for each lesson significantly.”

With the time saved by using iAchieve, Daniel used creative ways to engage his learners, including recording Walking Talking Mocks and uploading them to YouTube for his learners to watch in their own time. His class could then logon to iAchieve and work through the past papers that are available and practice for their exam.

The initial success that Daniel achieved with this first cohort of learners was the catalyst to introducing a wider range of vocational and technical qualifications at Corby Technical School.  The school went on to introduce courses in Food and Cookery and Engineering studies, using iAchieve to support the implementation and delivery, and moved over to the NCFE Level 1/2 Technical Award in Health and Fitness too. 

Daniel is rightly proud of how the vocational courses he’s introduced have positively impacted learners:

“The learners bought into the course from the get go.  One of my learners was not really interested in much at all, he had low confidence, doesn’t like working in lessons, doesn’t like exams and hasn’t had much success at school up to now. He was my biggest concern.  We gave him a mentor and we helped him to realise that what he was achieving in Health and Fitness, he could start to apply to other areas of his school life. The positive impact of gaining a merit has given him self-confidence and belief, and he’s going on to study mechanics at college – something he couldn’t previously have done because he wouldn’t have had the qualifications to get in.”

The bold move to switch these initial learners and give them a second chance to succeed really paid off; out of Dan’s group of 16 learners 4 achieved a pass, 3 achieved a merit and 7 achieved a distinction.

“We would definitely recommend using iAchieve – we are going to use it lots next year.  I hope to extend and grow the vocational offering in the school and V Certs and iAchieve will be at the centre of that.  I was so surprised to hear that iAchieve is a small company, the support we got from the get go has been fantastic and I just assumed you were a large organisation.”

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