Page 48 - SEN116 January-February 2022

Post-16
Developing skills for
the world of work
Peter Gaskell describes how a college news agency has inspired and motivated students with real world employment opportunities.
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Last year the Pathways department in Loreto College set up a digital news agency and ‘employed’ 18 young people to cover breaking stories from our college. As teachers we wanted them to experience working in
the media sector.
What started out as a nice idea turned into a passion project for these learners. After the first lessons we started getting emails from them over the weekend, with articles, designs and ideas for the agency.
Many SEND young people are marginalised by society because of their disabilities and they don’t always have high aspirations. They often find it harder to get a job than mainstream students. Data from the Office for National Statistics backs this up. The UK employment rate for people with disabilities is 52.3% - significantly lower than the employment rate for people without disabilities, which is 81.1%.
We wanted to tackle these issues but also open students’ eyes to the exciting and varied opportunities offered by digital careers. This led our department to work with Digital Advantage, a charity that delivers innovative work experiences to young people of all ages and abilities.
They explained that a city like Manchester, which has a burgeoning digital sector, is struggling to recruit the right
“SEND young people are marginalised by society because of their disabilities”
people. We discussed the fact that many of our students – most of whom have autism and other support needs - are often very focused, logical thinkers who have good attention to detail and strong problem-solving abilities.
These are exactly the skills that are in high demand within the digital sector, yet not enough talented teenagers with special educational needs and disabilities are getting digital jobs.
The team at Digital Advantage suggested that we replicate a real-life digital business environment at the college. The students were given the chance to build the brand from the ground up and named it LEVEL.
Students began writing news and feature stories, they drafted video scripts, took photos and made videos about Loreto, their friends and issues close to their heart.
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