Young people in Exeter are set to benefit from greater choices and higher standards of education under a new partnership between Exeter College, the five secondary schools in the city and the two special schools. The Exeter4Learning partnership aims to raise the aspirations and ambitions of the city’s 14-19 year olds and to further improve levels of achievement at 16+ and 18+.

Exeter College principal Richard Atkins said: “This new partnership builds on other recent successes in the city, including the staying-on in full-time education rate post-16, which has climbed from 59% three years ago, to 71% in 2006. This means that the number of young people staying on in full-time learning in the city has almost reached the same levels as in the rest of Devon.”

One of the priorities of the new Exeter4Learning partnership is to offer young people more subject choice and career options at both 14+ and 16+. This year, for the first time, Year 9 pupils are able to choose from both the traditional academic curriculum in their own school and from a wide range of vocational options offered in other schools in the city and at Exeter College. From next year, the partnership aims to offer a range of new vocational Specialist Diplomas which can be started in schools and completed at Exeter College.

The Exeter4Learning partnership will bring together a city-wide Governors Group supported by the University of Exeter. The Strategy Group of Principals and Headteachers will be employing a new city-wide 14-19 Development Manager to ensure that young people are able to access this new curriculum offer. The Exeter4Learning partnership will be formally launched this summer and it is hoped that it will make a measurable contribution to further raising standards of education and training across the whole city.

Mandi Street, head of Isca College and Chair of the Exeter4Learning Management Group, said: “The mission of the new partnership is to increase educational opportunities for the young people of Exeter through collaboration. “We have been meeting to look at how we can work more closely together to further raise the achievements of all young people in Exeter, ensure they are achieving as well as they possibly can and have aspirations to go on to college and university. “We want to make education an asset of Exeter and celebrate all the great things we have achieved.”

Hundreds of pupils already attend Exeter College every year to complete vocational courses while at secondary school.

Some students also travel to a different school to study a particular course.

St Peter’s School pupils Simon Hendley, 14, and Adam Cunnington, 15, go to Isca College once a week to do Applied Art GCSE. Simon said: “The organisation works well because we have a taxi here. “We’re pleased we took the course because we are able to do the double award art course and we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. “We have been able to use the specialist media equipment at Isca, like using the Macs for our animation project, and that’s been great.”