Schools across the country are using iAchieve to support the implementation and delivery of NCFE qualifications. The iAchieve online platform provides learners with an additional and alternative way of engaging with their NCFE qualification, and helps to reduce teacher workload at the same time. George Eliot School in Warwickshire, and Corby Technical School discuss how they’ve used iAchieve to successfully introduce Business and Enterprise and Health and Fitness.
One of the ways iAchieve is used is to support teachers who may be delivering outside of their area of expertise. In an ideal world, there would always be a specialist delivering the qualification, but in reality, for schools to offer the right qualifications for their learners, sometimes that just isn’t possible.
Sean Phillips, Head of Computer Science at George Eliot School is delivering the V Cert in Business and Enterprise, and said: “iAchieve has meant that delivery has been so much easier than it would’ve been otherwise. Although a small part of my degree was in Business, I’m not a specialist Business teacher, but iAchieve just provides so much guidance, it’s structured exactly to the qualification and I can see exactly what needs to be covered. The learners can also see exactly what’s required of them, and it gives them confidence and allows them to get on with it. I just wish we had it earlier, it’s a great price and you just get so much from it. iAchieve has helped us to deliver qualifications that we wouldn’t have been able to do so otherwise.”
It’s not only non-specialists that benefit from using iAchieve. Any teacher that is new to delivering a qualification, or is delivering a new version of the specification will find it useful. Lucy Harvard, Director of Creative and Performance at George Eliot oversees the delivery of the NCFE Health and Fitness qualification, which is delivered by a PE specialist. Lucy said: “This course is being delivered by an NQT who hasn’t delivered the course before, and iAchieve has been a really useful tool for him. It’s helped to reduce his workload in terms of planning and preparation, and has allowed him to focus on teaching.” Lucy explained that the department decided to use iAchieve to introduce the V Cert in Health and Fitness after it was recommended to them by another school.
The iAchieve online platform provides an engaging workspace for learners, offering an alternative way of learning. Lucy continued: “When iAchieve was recommended to deliver the Health and Fitness course, it was a saving grace. The learners really bought into it, and it proved to be such a great qualification for those that were not quite ready for the GCSE which is heavily reliant on a written exam. Learners love iAchieve because it’s really well structured and self-led, they can lead their own learning, and it helps to build their confidence because they can see that they can do it. It’s been really good for them, and it’s been a lifeline for us, it really has. What it does so well is reduce workload for staff and accelerate progress for learners.”
For learners that aren’t showing sufficient progress on an academic course, such as GCSE PE, exploring a technical alternative such as NCFE’s Health and Fitness can be a fantastic option to make sure learners leave school with a qualification in that subject area. Daniel Rogers, Lead Teacher of PE and Vocational Studies at Corby Technical School has been using iAchieve to support the delivery of Health and Fitness for a number of years now. In January 2018, he switched a group of Year 11 learners from a variety of other vocational and academic courses to NCFE Health and Fitness using iAchieve.
“I wouldn’t even have attempted to run the course in this way without iAchieve.”
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 log on to iAchieve and work through the past papers that are available and practice for their exam.
Daniel continued: “We would definitely recommend using iAchieve – we are planning to use it a lot next year. I hope to extend and grow the vocational offering in the school and NCFE 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 assumed they were a large organisation.”