Academic Support Specialist

Cirencester College is a specialist Sixth Form College in a rural setting on the outskirts of Cirencester, Gloucestershire. One of only three designated specialist Sixth Form Colleges in the South West, Cirencester College is one of the top ranking Sixth Form Colleges in the country.

The College provides a bridge between school and university, apprenticeships or employment. Students experience the academic challenge, pastoral support and enrichment expected at the best sixth form but with a more adult ethos, based on mutual respect, to prepare you to be a successful, independent person.

The College offers an unrivalled choice of subjects from the Upgrade Programme to Level 3 A-levels, T-levels and Vocational courses. The great choice of courses and professional apprenticeships is a major reason why so many students make us their first choice.

Cirencester College ensures that students achieve their full potential through individual student tutorials. Cirencester Sixth Form College’s reputation for excellent teaching, learning, innovation and student support produces consistently high value-added scores and achievement rates.

ABOUT US

Our students

About a third of our students are from Cirencester, a third from Swindon/North Wiltshire and the rest from around Gloucestershire. There are also growing numbers from Oxfordshire and South Gloucestershire. Most travel some distance to get here which means that they are highly motivated and want to succeed. They have chosen to travel past many other providers to get to us because they want the special experience of a proper Sixth Form College. They quickly adapt to the atmosphere of high expectations and support in College and always impress visitors with their politeness and focus. They are generally punctual to class, respond well to their lecturers and peers and focus on their work. Staff who have joined us from other schools and colleges are usually pleasantly surprised. 90% of students are on Level 3 programmes, with the majority doing A-levels and a rapidly growing proportion doing T-Levels. We try and give students access to the same broad enrichment programme and pastoral support.

Parents are supportive of their sons and daughters and of the College. We have Parents’ Evenings twice a year to provide feedback and discuss any issues. We also continue to develop a range of on-line tools to improve communication further.

Our Staff

Our lecturers are well qualified academically or in their vocational fields. Many also work as external examiners. Almost all are trained teachers with around half having been trained here whilst in their first year with us. Lecturers are grouped in subject teams in Faculties. Team working is strong and lecturers frequently share best practice within and between groups. We have a strong tradition of staff development including weekly teaching and learning sessions which many staff attend and where sessions are often led by their peers.

Lecturers are currently on a GFE style contract as the College was originally a Tertiary College and we retain many of those Tertiary Features. These include adult education, apprenticeships and a wider range of non A-Level provision than most 6FCs. However, our contract contains many features which are more common in 6FCs. For example, a higher pay scale than most FE, reducing the number of directed days to 195 (plus 10 self-directed professional development days) and one of the lowest annual teaching loads (815 hours). Some lecturers are also tutor’s and most contribute to enrichment and/or out of class learning.

We have a strong track-record of ‘growing our own staff’. In addition to training a majority of our lecturers we have also developed many of them in promoted posts. Internal promotions have included Vice Principals, Faculty Heads and our Senior Professionals who support the Faculty Heads. Our staff development model is designed to give people the opportunity to gain skills, understanding and responsibility so that we can continue this pattern.

Learning and the student experience is also very well supported by our teams of support staff, most of who are based centrally in the student journey unit in the hub or in our learning support centre. Support services pride themselves on their excellent customer care which is widely recognised by parents and students. We take the view that all our staff are responsible for student experience.

Our Campus

The College adjoins the early eighteenth-century Cirencester Park and is a 15-minute walk from town. The playing field out front and the surrounding trees create a green-campus feel which our staff and students find attractive.

The campus is currently being transformed both in terms of buildings and biodiversity. We have a Sports and Fitness Centre, science laboratories and a new state-of-the-art ‘Digital Skills Centre’, opened in 2022, a fantastic new facility. In 2023 we will open a new T-level building with specialist rooms for Health Science and Engineering. We have plans to go further with an additional Animal Science Block, Library and Theatre extensions, an Art Loft and much more.

A second transformation of our campus is about encouraging biodiversity and making more of our outdoor space. We have been developing our ‘green campus plans’ for many years, and our efforts have been boosted by being part of the Wild Campus Cirencester Project with two neighbouring institutions to provide better habitats for bats and other endangered species. We have undertaken a great deal of planting of trees, native hedging, bulbs and wild flowers while a small group of staff have converted one part of our site to a ‘forest school area’ with ponds and wildlife areas. They currently work on various projects on site to improve habitats including building a roundhouse. Our ambitions include developing more interesting outside spaces both between the buildings and around the green parts of our campus. We hope it is somewhere you will also enjoy.

IT infrastructure is excellent and classrooms and study areas well served with data connections and Wi-Fi. Teaching rooms are equipped with projectors and smart boards with sets of laptops also available in most areas. Increasingly lecturers provide additional support to students via courses set up on our VLE (Moodle).