CAVA News

 Due to the cost of living crisis, retention is an ongoing issue across the country. CAVA members continue to implement a range of support for their students to counteract these issues and ensure their students can achieve to the best of their ability. Over the past five years, Truro and Penwith College has supported their Access to HE students to have a high retention rate and strong grade outcomes. Recently, their Access to HE Coordinator spoke to us to discuss their effective practices. Support from application Truro and Penwith College begin their support for students before they are accepted onto one of their Access to HE courses, by engaging with students via a phone call during the application stage. Within this discussion, students are encouraged to look into career exploration and consider different higher education (HE) progression routes which they may be interested in. This focuses students on the reasons why they are studying and serves as a key motivator throughout th...

Analysis of student outcomes across the CAVA membership has shown exceptionally high pass rates on Access to HE Diplomas. This demonstrates a close relationship between retention and achievement - if students stay until the end of their course, they tend to achieve their full Diploma. We have been exploring retention good practice with our CAVA members. Loughborough College has a wide variety of ways in which they support their students. The Curriculum Manager for Access to HE sat down with Georgia Green, CAVA’s Communication and Events Officer, to share their good practice and give an insight into some of the ways they are supporting their students. Application Loughborough College starts to support their students before they are accepted onto the Access to HE Diploma. During the application process, a member of staff conducts a phone call with each student where they discuss topics such as why they have taken a break from education, their family structure, and whether they have a rel...