Common use of Work Placements Clause in Contracts

Work Placements. The College has increased the number of work placements available to our students from our 2013-14 figure of 476 to 670 in Session 2016-17, and we plan to further increase the number of available work placements over the period of this Outcome Agreement. The main subject areas where this increase will be focused upon are Care, Business and Engineering. The second phase of our Employer Engagement systems development is to introduce a central work placement reporting tool which will allow greater transparency, ease of reporting and monitoring of progress towards this target. The College takes cognisance of the Work Placement Standard for Colleges, and strives towards all appropriate vocational courses having a meaning work placement in accordance with the Standard. The College has seconded a member of staff, paid for by SFC Developing the Young Workforce funding, to further develop work placements, with the focus being on Civil Engineering in the first instance. The College successfully complies with all Equality Act requirements and the Scottish Specific Duties, and continues to meet the three aims of the Equality Duty through our mainstreaming approach to equality. We published our Mainstreaming Report and our Equality Outcome progress together with our annual employment data and equal pay statement. Equality remains a key element of staff development with general awareness raising sessions delivered to complement on-line training. Specific resources for equality are also made available for staff. Staff from our Learning Support Service have delivered tailored staff development on reasonable adjustments and specific needs and barriers of students with particular additional support needs such as Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Mental Health. We have worked jointly with the Student Association to raise awareness through events throughout the year to highlight specific issues such as violence against women, LGBT History Month, and Show Racism the Red Card. We successfully raised the profile of the 16 Days of Action Campaign through a very thorough social media campaign that was well received across college. Staff and student data are collated and analysed for any negative impacts in terms of profile, retention, progression and attainment. Specific action is being planned for areas of under- representation, for example women in STEM, and action is taken through the self-evaluation process where there are any differences in attainment for people with protected characteristics. Equality is integrated into learning and teaching approaches through the Creative Learning & Learner Technology Strategy and associated Learning Activity Planning Tool. Partnership remains a key focus, with the Equalities team having representation on local groups consisting of public sector and third sector partners such as the Forth Valley LGBT Development Group, the MAHRS (Stop Hate Campaign) group and the 16 Days of Action Group (raising awareness of issues of violence against women). The College holds two key charter mark awards for Equality. We were the first college in Scotland to receive the BRITE Chartermark for inclusion, demonstrating our commitment to inclusive practice across college. We have also gained the LGBT Youth Chartermark at Foundation level for our strategic and structural approach to equality across the whole organisation. We also received the Silver award for our Student Services function area, again for our inclusive practice in supporting LGBT students. These awards examine and recognise everything from our Respect campaign, equality awareness raising, staff and learner development, learning support service, inclusive learning and teaching approaches through to physical aids and adjustments in terms of accessibility of services, buildings and technology. The College has developed an Access and Inclusion Strategy, which includes the College’s Gender Action Plan. The College Equalities Team provides a needs-led Extended Learning Support (ELS) service for learners with additional support needs. Support is tailored to individual circumstances with the learner at the centre of the process to ensure their needs are met effectively. High quality needs assessments are completed with learners and the College is an accredited needs assessment centre for Student Awards Agency for Scotland Disabled Student Allowance applications. All prospective, new and current learners are informed of support available and how to access it – learners are able to disclose support needs at any time during their time at College. Currently, in Session 2016-17, we are currently providing ELS to over 600 students with a wide range of additional support needs from acquired brain injury, short term memory loss, dyslexia or asperger syndrome to mental health difficulties, completing a range of programmes at all levels. Further detail is provided within the College’s draft Access and Inclusion Strategy. The department of Access and Progression provides a wide range of courses, under the banner of ‘supported programmes’, for disadvantaged young people in the senior phase of school who have a diverse range of support needs. This spans from supporting those with learning disabilities and/or those with social, emotional and behavioural needs. We provide, on all three campuses, extended school link classes for young people with learning disabilities to support them in their transition from school into college or the workplace. These young people have learning support needs ranging from profound and complex needs to those with mild to moderate learning difficulties. We work closely with schools and support agencies, such as social work, to help these young people to progress. In addition, the department provide a wide range of courses specifically targeted towards young people in the senior phase of school who have social, emotional and/or behavioural support needs. These young people are amongst the hardest to reach in our community who may have disengaged with school and/ or the wider society or currently be in a specialist school support unit. Working with a diverse range of agencies and partners, including schools, we participate in school leaver destination meetings and, where possible, individual review meetings to support the young person, their carers/families and wider agencies support the young person’s progression into college or the workplace.

Work Placements. The College has increased the number of work placements available to our students from our 2013-14 figure of 476 to 670 a target of 600 in Session 2016-17, and we plan to further increase the number of available work placements maintain this target over the period of this Outcome Agreement. The main subject areas where this increase will be focused upon are Care, Business and Engineering. The second phase of our Employer Engagement systems development is to introduce a central work placement reporting tool which will allow greater transparency, ease of reporting and monitoring of progress towards this target. The College takes cognisance of the Work Placement Standard for Colleges, and strives towards all appropriate vocational courses having a meaning work placement in accordance with the Standard. The College has seconded a member of staff, paid for by SFC Developing the Young Workforce funding, to further develop work placements, with the focus being on Civil Engineering in the first instance. The College successfully complies with all Equality Act requirements and the Scottish Specific Duties, and continues to meet the three aims of the Equality Duty through our mainstreaming approach to equality. We published our Mainstreaming Report and our Equality Outcome progress together with our annual employment data and equal pay statement. Equality remains a key element of staff development with general awareness raising sessions delivered to complement on-line training. Specific resources for equality are also made available for staff. Staff from our Learning Support Service have delivered tailored staff development on reasonable adjustments and specific needs and barriers of students with particular additional support needs such as Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Mental Health. We have worked jointly with the Student Association to raise awareness through events throughout the year to highlight specific issues such as violence against women, LGBT History Month, and Show Racism the Red Card. We successfully raised the profile of the 16 Days of Action Campaign through a very thorough social media campaign that was well received across college. Staff and student data are collated and analysed for any negative impacts in terms of profile, retention, progression and attainment. Specific action is being planned for areas of under- representation, for example women in STEM, and action is taken through the self-evaluation process where there are any differences in attainment for people with protected characteristics. Equality is integrated into learning and teaching approaches through the Creative Learning & Learner Technology Strategy and associated Learning Activity Planning Tool. Partnership remains a key focus, with the Equalities team having representation on local groups consisting of public sector and third sector partners such as the Forth Valley LGBT Development Group, the MAHRS (Stop Hate Campaign) group and the 16 Days of Action Group (raising awareness of issues of violence against women). The College holds two key charter mark awards for Equality. We were the first college in Scotland to receive the BRITE Chartermark for inclusion, demonstrating our commitment to inclusive practice across college. We have also gained the LGBT Youth Chartermark at Foundation level for our strategic and structural approach to equality across the whole organisation. We also received the Silver award for our Student Services function area, again for our inclusive practice in supporting LGBT students. These awards examine and recognise everything from our Respect campaign, equality awareness raising, staff and learner development, learning support service, inclusive learning and teaching approaches through to physical aids and adjustments in terms of accessibility of services, buildings and technology. The College has developed is developing an Access and Inclusion Strategy, Strategy (attached as Appendix 2) which includes is currently at draft stage. When fully developed this strategy will include the College’s Gender Action Plan. The College Equalities Team provides a needs-led Extended Learning Support (ELS) service for learners with additional support needs. Support is tailored to individual circumstances with the learner at the centre of the process to ensure their needs are met effectively. High quality needs assessments are completed with learners and the College is an accredited needs assessment centre for Student Awards Agency for Scotland Disabled Student Allowance applications. All prospective, new and current learners are informed of support available and how to access it – learners are able to disclose support needs at any time during their time at College. Currently, in Session 2016-17, we are currently providing ELS to over 600 students with a wide range of additional support needs from acquired brain injury, short term memory loss, dyslexia or asperger syndrome to mental health difficulties, completing a range of programmes at all levels. Further detail is provided within the College’s draft Access and Inclusion Strategy. The department of Access and Progression provides a wide range of courses, under the banner of ‘supported programmes’, for disadvantaged young people in the senior phase of school who have a diverse range of support needs. This spans from supporting those with learning disabilities and/or those with social, emotional and behavioural needs. We provide, on all three campuses, extended school link classes for young people with learning disabilities to support them in their transition from school into college or the workplace. These young people have learning support needs ranging from profound and complex needs to those with mild to moderate learning difficulties. We work closely with schools and support agencies, such as social work, to help these young people to progress. In addition, the department provide a wide range of courses specifically targeted towards young people in the senior phase of school who have social, emotional and/or behavioural support needs. These young people are amongst the hardest to reach in our community who may have disengaged with school and/ or the wider society or currently be in a specialist school support unit. Working with a diverse range of agencies and partners, including schools, we participate in school leaver destination meetings and, where possible, individual review meetings to support the young person, their carers/families and wider agencies support the young person’s progression into college or the workplace.

Work Placements. The College has increased set ambitious targets to increase the number of work placements available to our students from our 2013-14 figure of 476 to 670 600 in Session 2016-17, and we plan to further increase the number of available work placements over the period of this Outcome Agreement. The main subject areas where this increase will be focused upon are Care, Business and Engineering. The second phase Part of our Employer Engagement systems development is to introduce a central work placement reporting tool which will allow greater transparency, ease of reporting transparency and monitoring of progress towards this target. The College takes cognisance of the Work Placement Standard for Colleges, and strives towards all appropriate vocational courses having a meaning work placement in accordance with the Standard. The College has seconded a member of staff, paid for by SFC Developing the Young Workforce funding, to further develop work placements, with the focus being on Civil Engineering in the first instance. The College successfully complies with all Equality Act requirements and the Scottish Specific Duties, and continues to meet the three aims of the Equality Duty through our mainstreaming approach to equality. We published our Mainstreaming Report and our Equality Outcome progress together with our annual employment data and equal pay statement. Equality remains a key element of staff development with general awareness raising sessions delivered to complement on-line training. Specific resources for equality are also made available for staff. Staff from our Learning Support Service have delivered tailored staff development on reasonable adjustments and specific needs and barriers of students with particular additional support needs such as Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Mental Health. We have worked jointly with the Student Association to raise awareness through events throughout the year to highlight specific issues such as violence against women, LGBT History Month, and Show Racism the Red Card. We successfully raised the profile of the 16 Days of Action Campaign through a very thorough social media campaign that was well received across college. Staff and student data are collated and analysed for any negative impacts in terms of profile, retention, progression and attainment. Specific action is being planned for areas of under- representation, for example women in STEM, and action is taken through the self-evaluation process where there are any differences in attainment for people with protected characteristics. Equality is integrated into learning and teaching approaches through the Creative Learning & Learner Technology Strategy and associated Learning Activity Planning Tool. Partnership remains a key focus, with the Equalities team having representation on local groups consisting of public sector and third sector partners such as the Forth Valley LGBT Development Group, the MAHRS (Stop Hate Campaign) group and the 16 Days of Action Group (raising awareness of issues of violence against women). The College holds two key charter mark awards for Equality. We were the first college in Scotland to receive the BRITE Chartermark for inclusion, demonstrating our commitment to inclusive practice across college. We have also gained the LGBT Youth Chartermark at Foundation level for our strategic and structural approach to equality across the whole organisation. We also received the Silver award for our Student Services function area, again for our inclusive practice in supporting LGBT students. These awards examine and recognise everything from our Respect campaign, equality awareness raising, staff and learner development, learning support service, inclusive learning and teaching approaches through to physical aids and adjustments in terms of accessibility of services, buildings and technology. The College has developed an Access a separate Equality Outcome Plan which outlines how we will meet the General Equality Duty to eliminate discrimination, advance equality and Inclusion Strategyxxxxxx good relations. The Equality Outcome Plan is aligned to the themes of the College Outcome Agreement and establishes key equality actions and measures to be achieved over the period 2016-17. As part of our continued process to mainstream equalities throughout all aspects of College operations, which includes the College’s Gender Action Planpriority equalities targets are included in this agreement. The College Equalities Team provides a needs-led Extended Learning Support (ELS) service for learners with additional support needs. Support is tailored to individual circumstances with the learner at the centre of the process to ensure their needs are met effectively. High quality needs assessments are completed with learners and the College is an accredited needs assessment centre for Student Awards Agency for Scotland Disabled Student Allowance applications. All prospective, new and current learners are informed of support available and how to access it – learners are able to disclose support needs at any time during their time at College. Currently, in Session 20162015-1716, we are currently providing ELS to over 600 590 students with a wide range of additional support needs from acquired brain injury, short term memory loss, dyslexia or asperger syndrome to mental health difficulties, completing a range of programmes at all levels. Further detail The team also supports staff who support learners through the provision of advice, guidance, training and staff development. Support to staff is provided within through awareness raising and specific training depending on the Collegesupport needs of the students in the classroom. Training on deaf awareness and autistic spectrum difficulties has been delivered to teaching staff providing them with the resources and information to work with these specific barriers. Our Learning Support team also provide individual expert advice to teaching staff based on the support recommendations they make according to students individual need. A key aspect of working with teaching departments is the strong links that our needs assessors have with the department they are allocated to. In depth knowledge of the course content and demands is fundamental to identifying the individual support that the student will require. It can be challenging to attempt to quantify the impact of ELS on a learner’s draft achievement or progression as there are so many other factors at play. However, we evaluate our service to learners in a number of ways. Annually we ask our learners for feedback via questionnaires on their experiences of the support provided and how this impacted on their learning and teaching. As part of self- evaluation, we then review and evaluate this information to make changes if required to our processes, procedures and our operational targets for the next year. We also facilitate focus groups with learners with additional support needs. We completed an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) on the ELS service in 2014. It suggested a number of ways in which we could attempt to improve our service, the key one being improving the joined up approach across college to supporting learners and getting the message about support available out to all staff holding different roles in college. We are reviewing our service delivery and how we reach students who require support. The service was rebranded as Learning Support service in Session 2015-2016 and we have seen a large increase in the number of referrals since then. In Session 2016-17 we are planning to work with students who have had benefit from our service (helped them stay on course/achieve), and use their experiences to formulate case studies to use in service marketing purposes. The aim is that real people feeding back their experiences of ELS may encourage others to seek this support. One area where we received excellent feedback from students was in the department of Creative Industries where a project to maximise inclusion using technology to enhance the student experience was developed. As a result of this project students were able to access a dedicated FVC youtube channel where specific tasks from the NC Sound Production course had been captured and recorded as computer images. This enabled the students to access these resources outside of formal teaching environments – learning at their own pace and resulted in improved competence levels for students as well as up-skilling staff to use technology to create a more inclusive learning experience. While learner feedback is crucial we also ask for feedback from the teaching staff we work with on whom we rely to put arrangements in place for learner support and make adjustments. We work with teaching staff to intervene if a learner is not accessing support or the support needs changed. Teaching departments through self- evaluation monitor PIs and this includes learners with protected characteristics and those with disabilities often include those we provide ELS to. We provide support to do this – our Diversity Coordinator meets with Curriculum Managers to investigate the differences in attainment rates by course level for disabled and non- disabled students. We are currently reviewing our processes for acting on the PI data and information. As a team, we have adopted the following: • Follow up (phone/email contact) learners with disabilities who withdrew and were unknown to learning support or did not engage with learning support - in Session 2013-14 39% learners with disabilities who withdrew were unknown or did not engage with learning support‌ • Reviewed ELS service promotion and utilise new methods of engaging learners • Working with colleagues in Access & Progression, Student Services, Learning Resources and Inclusion StrategyStirling University, we have improved cross-college support for increasing numbers of learners with mental health challenges • We are developing new approaches to supporting students with mental health difficulties as a result of the increase in the numbers of these students. The approaches involve working more collaboratively with colleagues across Student Support services and up-skilling staff to understand and support students with mental health difficulties. The department of Access and Progression provides a wide range of courses, under the banner of ‘supported programmes’, for disadvantaged young people in the senior phase of school who have a diverse range of support needs. This spans from supporting those with learning disabilities and/or those with social, emotional and behavioural needs. needs.‌ We provide, on all three campuses, extended school link classes for young people with learning disabilities to support them in their transition from school into college or the workplace. These young people have learning support needs ranging from profound and complex needs to those with mild to moderate learning difficulties. We work closely with schools and support agencies, such as social work, to help these young people to progress. progress.‌ In addition, the department provide a wide range of courses specifically targeted towards young people in the senior phase of school who have social, emotional and/or behavioural support needs. These young people are amongst the hardest to reach in our community who may have disengaged with school and/ or the wider society or currently be in a specialist school support unit. Working with a diverse range of agencies and partners, including schools, we participate in school leaver destination meetings and, where possible, individual review meetings to support the young person, their carers/families and wider agencies support the young person’s progression into college or the workplace. The College has recently been awarded the Buttle UK Quality Mark, recognising our commitment to ensuring there is excellent support within the College to help every Care Experienced student to be successful in their studies. As part of its application for the Buttle Quality Mark the College set out a very detailed Project Plan of how we plan to support Care Experienced students which is being implemented to schedule. This Project Plan includes raising awareness of what support is available for Care Experienced students, with examples being a separate area on the College website detailing available support, promoting information events to Care Experienced external contacts and having staff and existing Care Experienced students available at information events, the production of information leaflets among the range of support/activity already in place. Through the Project Plan we have detailed processes in place to allow Care Experienced students to disclose through Application, Enrolment or Induction, including how disclosures are followed up. We are working closer with our school contacts to encourage students to disclose, and are working to ensure an effective transition from school to College. Through the Project Plan we are ensuring there is appropriate on- going support for Care Experienced students. This support will vary depending on the individual, but may include weekly meetings with a course tutor or Learning Development Worker, or through regular monitoring against the student’s Personal Learning Support Plan, or through regular support meeting with other Care Experienced students, or through confidential counselling, or through additional core skills support to name just a few elements of support available. The Project Plan details the additional and regular reports that are run and monitored to highlight early any progress or attendance issues with Care Experienced students, and details the on-going continuing professional development being provided to ensure that staff can learn more about Care Experienced and how to provide additional support. The College is also working in conjunction with Corporate Parenting to signpost vulnerable youth including Care Experienced students to work placements as appropriate to increase the number of positive destinations for these students. Through our on-going commitment the College has set targets to increase the number of Care Experienced students at the College, through both increasing disclosures from students and also increasing our overall number as Care Experienced students become more aware of the support available from the College.