The recommendations

The eight principal recommendations are:

1. Improve outcomes through establishing a comprehensive benchmarking programme and promoting the adoption of a life skills curriculum
2. Raise young people’s aspirations through promoting a model CEIAG curriculum and ensuring all young people are supported to consider a range of options
3. Develop a comprehensive local offer, implemented through collaboration, to widen what is available and enable young people to exercise their choice
4. Enhance provision below Level 2 by putting provision on a more stable footing, addressing the NEET issue and providing for progression
5. Improve early support for students with mental health issues to promote well-being and remove a barrier to achievement and progression
6. Improve access to post-16 provision by prioritising travel support to those who most need it to and by lobbying government to support post-16 travel
7. Learn from lockdown to improve support for remote learning and retain more young people in some form of learning
8. Establish a Strategic Board to take these recommendations forward and provide strategic oversight of provision.

Recommendation Implementation Groups

The Strategic Board has established Recommendation Implementation Groups which are chaired by members of the Board. Their purpose is to bring together partners from across the post-16 sector in Kent to develop and implement projects to meet the requirements of the recommendations.

Initial membership of the groups aims to be representative of the sector. Strategic Board members are leading the groups and will ensure other relevant professionals are invited to participate as appropriate. Each of the principal recommendations now has a draft implementation plan outlining a potential way to take the recommendation forward, which will be adopted and adapted as appropriate.

The recommendations aim to improve the sector for all young people, including those with special needs and ensure there are good pathways for all.