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Welwyn Garden City


		11-16 schools

		6th form schools

		Colleges

The Welwyn Garden City Consortium in Hertfordshire comprises three 11-18 schools and an FE college. It was established in 1987, instigated primarily by one of the secondary schools. The institutions recognised that they could meet the education needs of 16-19-year-olds more effectively by collaborating instead of competing with each other. With the support of the LEA, the institutions created, effectively, a single sixth form for Welwyn Garden City. Collaboration meant the students could be offered a much wider range of subjects and qualifications than could be offered if the institutions operated independently.

Compact geographic area

A key factor in the success of the consortium has been the location of the institutions. The college lies in the centre of the town. The three schools are two to three miles from the centre and each about five miles from each other. Teaching is timetabled in half-day blocks and the LEA provides bus transport round the sites at the beginning and end of the lunch hour. Students are responsible for making their own way to classes at the beginning of the day and making their own way home at the end of the day.

A single full-time co-ordinator

From the outset, the consortium has always had a full-time coordinator to manage the consortium. The coordinator has always been recruited from outside the consortium institutions and based on an LEA site. The co-ordinator is a member of the senior management team in each member institution.

Sharing out the work

The member institutions of the consortium do not compete for students. The most popular subjects are taught in all the member institutions. Those attracting small numbers of students are shared out between the partners in the consortium, with some rotation from year to year. Examples are music, theatre studies, German, French, law, accountancy, economics, all of which have only one class in the consortium. This sharing out of the teaching is a matter of annual negotiation. Negotiations are amicable because it is in the interest of each institution to reach an agreed distribution of the teaching.

The college offers A level and GCSE provision as well as vocational courses. Some vocational courses are also offered in schools. Exceptionally, some staff move sites to teach particular lessons, but generally it is only the students who move between institutions for lessons. Over 70 per cent of students are taught at more than one site. Funding to each institution is in proportion to the amount of student taught hours contributed to the Consortium by each institution.

Now a 14-19 consortium

From September 2002, the consortium has extended its age range from 16-19 to 14-19. Currently, 35 students drawn from all three schools are following applied skills courses at the college. From September 2003, the college will offer courses leading to seven different vocational qualifications, mainly NVQ1, and possibly to NVQ2 in some areas. These courses will be part of the mainstream provision, on offer to all 14-19-year-olds, so that any student will be able to combine NVQ learning with GCSE. It is expected that between 100 to 120 students will avail themselves of this NVQ provision from September 2003. The NVQ provision is expected to occupy two half-days at the college. The seven NVQ areas are: construction, horticulture, health and social care/ childcare, motor vehicle/electronics, retail/customer care, sport and leisure and animal care/horse care.