Key steps towards a more successful open evening for your Sixth Form

Drawing on my experiences as a careers tutor, consultant and post-16 researcher, I offer four important points to help ensure your Sixth Form open evening really appeals to parents and students and improves the chances of successful course choices. Research has shown that the number one thing prospective families want is good information & guidance about the courses on offer. The four points below start here and add muscles to this dimension of the Sixth Form recruitment process.  

1. Thematically group courses together based on the curriculum offer.

For example, if you offer Human Geography place it with Sociology; English Literature with Classical Civilisation; Sport Sciences with Biology; Modern Languages with Film Studies. This requires fostering conversations between courses with teachers who may not be used to speaking with one another. The usual groupings of STEM, Humanities, Languages, Social Sciences etc. only works for a minority of students. Furthermore, this approach distracts students from considering the themes and topic areas that really engage and excite their interests. Every centre can also review its enrolments as a means of discerning successful patterns. Did you know some course combinations have been shown to add value to students’ performance?

2. Don’t foster an environment of competition between course leads.

This results in misinformation being pushed. Course leads who highlight the sweet parts of courses do no-one any favours; those more appealing aspects of a course that are actually minor topics covered in just one lesson or the trips learners may have opportunity to go on. The reality is students will be learning specific curriculum material for over 100 hours a year. Everyone leading courses post-16 needs to reflect on how they can support those learners grappling with complex and often new material for all of those hours. Collaboration between course leads on approaches to study and curriculum connections leads to enhanced provision. And this cooperation needs to begin in the recruitment process.   

3. Present a balanced & comprehensive summary of the curriculum contents of courses offered.

Use the specifications to summarise the contents students will have to study in order to succeed on the course. Include a brief description of how students will be assessed, what the key AOs are. Some teachers fear that this will put off students. There will be topics that expressed in their simplest form may not be understandable to all learners. The challenge of course leaders is to translate the actual contents that students will study into information that Year 11s can comprehend. Rather than put off students, it will help the right students to find the courses that interest them the most.

4. Don’t focus on career aspirations before course choices in relation to academic pathways.

There are exceptions to this rule, for example, you may have some exceptionally gifted students who know 100% they want to study a medical degree, others who have clear ideas about becoming engineers or architects. These courses require one or two specific A-Levels and students need to know about these. But for all students, consideration of course contents should precede consideration of the relevance of courses to careers. Most young people have only vague ideas about the kinds of careers they’d like to pursue. The majority of careers can be entered into successfully from a variety of degree starting points. Help your students find the courses that interest them and then discuss the kinds of future careers they have thought about.

The goal of successful Sixth Form recruitment is not just numbers. Yes, these are essential for sustainability and development, but the learners will come if what is offered is the best information, advice and guidance to help them make choices that will lead to success. At the heart of the process should be the curriculum offered. Celebrate this. Be clear about this. Begin the work of introducing learners to the new knowledge and skills you will help them acquire.

My work and research in this area led me to develop a new tool to help students make successful course choices. You can learn more about this below:

Find out more information about the service we can provide: