Taster Day 8 July 2024

Our Taster Day is now full and it is no longer possible to register for a place. Please check our website in the summer term for further information about our Open Evenings on 13th and 14th November.

Our Year 10 Taster Day is an opportunity to experience a day in the life of a sixth form college student. You will attend lessons in a range of A level and Level 3 BTEC subjects, be introduced to what it means to be a Level 3 learner, and access the college's facilities at breaks and lunchtime. The day is designed to provide a positive and inspiring experience, motivating students with their GCSE studies through Year 11 and also leading to an application to BHASVIC this coming Autumn. It can be helpful in deciding which subjects to study at Level 3 and whether BHASVIC is the right environment for you.

Safety Information and parental consent: Before applying for your Young Person to attend the Taster Day, we need parents and carers to understand and give consent to important differences between the BHASVIC Taster Day and attendance to a school-based external trip of visit. The Taster Day form needs to be completed by the parent/carer which provides the college with parental consent to host your Young Person for the day.

Your Young Person will be asked by college staff to remain on the college premises throughout the day and to follow their timetable, but that if they choose to leave the college premises this will not be monitored by college staff. As a college, we have an open-access site and do not staff or monitor comings and goings of students at entrances/exits. Our entry points are not staffed, gated or locked. We are aware that this is quite different to most secondary schools.

In addition, unlike a school-run visit or trip, college staff are do not monitor the movements of students or their attendance throughout the event. As a one-off event, the college will not provide mechanisms for reporting absences to parents or carers. Instead, we ask that your Young Person lets you know their movements to and from the event, particularly if leaving the college site during the event or finishing earlier than planned. We advise that your Young Person brings a charged and credited mobile phone with them on the day, or alternatively that they are briefed by you to go to our College Reception should they need to leave the site before the end of the day.

Finally, because this application process requires the parent/carer to apply on their Young Person’s behalf, we ask that the parent/carer discusses the choice of subjects with their Young Person to ensure they represent the Young Person’s preferences and interests. We ask that parent/carers follow the Young Person’s school absence procedures for the day.

We would like to reassure all students, parents, carers and school staff that the Year 10 Taster Day is a highly successful, positive and popular event, where Year 10 attendees enjoy the experience of a day in the life of a sixth form college student (with the greater freedoms and responsibilities that this entails). Year 10 BHASVIC Taster Day students are very diligent in following college staff requests to stay on premises or notify our Reception if they intend to leave the college campus for any reason.

Note: Arriving on the day without a place We are sorry that we need to send students home or to their school if they arrive on the day but haven’t booked a place. The event involves timetabling students into four classes and we need to ensure that these classes are not over-capacity. We also need to have parent/carer permission. It isn’t possible to prepare a timetable on the day for lots of students who didn’t book a place – this is logistically not achievable. We hope that you understand if this applies to you.