Aspirations Employability Diploma (AED) Programme
The Aspirations Academies Trust provides all Sixth Form students with opportunities to develop work readiness by experiencing the AED programme. The programme helps each student to develop the range of skills and capabilities required for success in today’s global world. It is a compulsory element of the curriculum in Year 12, with the option of taking an additional module in Year 13.
The AED programme involves Applied Trans-discipline Learning. This means that students will be learning between, across and beyond different disciplines that are relevant to the real world and applied to real practical situations. The goal is to access, analyse and synthesise information and knowledge over several disciplines in order to understand the operation and issues facing the world today and in the future. More specifically, the AED provides critical path analysis within a kinaesthetic setting, which it achieves through it’s six stage approach:
- Know your profile
- Develop your story
- Create experience (project work)
- Review your profile development
- Engage professionally
- Be the best!
The AED is delivered through projects. The Project themes are broad ranging and challenging, embracing themes of innovation and problem solving as well as exploratory. In Year 12 Students take on 4 projects centered around
- NHS/Medical related including bio-medical and research and World Health Organisation related also linking environmental issues linked to health
- Engineering at its broadest including medical, chemical and digital
- Education and Training at its broadest including Sport related coaching
- Choice project, which includes anything the student is interested in
The projects are each 6 weeks in length with four hours supervised time each week. In addition to this, students may have the opportunity to meet with employers either face to face or virtually, to support them in their project. In week 6, students will present their project and receive feedback from their peers as well as formative feedback from their AED deliverer.