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Gateways Programme goes online

25 Nov 2020

Gateways is our flagship pre-16 WP programme that supports approximately 1700 WP students across 48 Greater Manchester secondary schools

Gateways

Through the programme, pupils visit the University annually from Year 7 to Year 11 to gain essential information, and advice about higher education, learn more about the subjects you can study at degree level, and help create a sense of belonging for the students in a university environment. 

Since summer, the Gateways team have been working to recreate the programme that would normally be delivered face to face, into a virtual delivery format. What was previously delivered over 60 multi-school visit days will now be delivered through up to 150 virtual, individual-school sessions, fortnightly Student Ambassador Q&A sessions, and a ‘Student Life’ conference for up to 570 Year 11 students. We have currently got 29 of the original 48 schools, signed up to take part in the virtual sessions, which is more than we had hoped for given the challenges that schools are facing with taking part in non-curricular activities. The new offering started with the first event on 7 October, on the GoToWebinar platform, and since then we have delivered twenty Year 10 sessions, and three student ambassador Q&A panels, with many more to come over November and December. Our sessions take place via the GoToWebinar platform, and have a range of pre-recorded videos, live sections, and interactive activities that require some teacher facilitation.

Since starting the new programme, we have continually received positive feedback from our teachers. For example: “The timings of the activities were great. The presenter was really clear and explained things extremely well and at the right level for students. I particularly liked the explanation of the Pathways from school to L3 and beyond. This helped bring in discussion about choosing Post-16 options and the importance of considering Post-18 options and researching using UCAS.  The time given to explaining, showing clips and students being active was well balanced and worked really well for ours students. Thank you!” – Smithills School Teacher.

The Gateways team have also been working hard to develop a new website for pupils, teachers and parents, which has been designed to both consolidate the information that students gain from our Gateways sessions, but to also provide additional information, advice and guidance, and signposting opportunities, to students, their parents, and their teachers, who may struggle to find and/or understand other sources of information online. Although primarily for students on the Gateways programme, this is an excellent resource for any pre-16 student wanting to understand and prepare for higher education.