Pitch for futures.
It is a widely shared opinion that Futures lessons are not liked very much, it’s become much like an inside joke that very few people see the necessity in futures lessons. Whilst it is fun to moan and have a joke, this isn’t actually productive. What we have created is an advert campaigning for change within these futures lessons. From our research we have discovered that students would like to learn how to be financially responsible, learning thing such as how to write a cheque, or how to take out a loan. Our actual campaign is going to be called “I Love Futures”. This is purposefully misleading, grabbing the attention of students, being such a bold statement. We were inspired by our shared dislike for futures and want for a better standard of education in these lessons.
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Our idea for our radio campaign is to advertise the good things you can achieve from Futures lessons at BOA. For a while my group searched around for an idea for our campaign that would both, make some sort of impact around us if successful and also be in the interests of all of us. We found that within the group, we all shared the common dislike for our Futures lessons and that if we campaigned in the proper way, would create a significant impact on our environment. At this point we decided to do some research into our futures lessons and found that they aren’t just localised for our college. Our Futures lessons are our college’s way of incorporating the statutory Citizenship lessons into the curriculum. Brought in by the Labour government in 2002, Citizenship lessons were designed to develop students as “successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens”. The curriculum for Citizenship lessons is based on key ideas (such as identities and democracy) and skills (such as critical thinking and taking responsibility for your actions) that students should develop to make a positive contribution to society. The lessons have been compulsory for Key Stage 1 and 2 since 2002, with the lessons only being on the curriculum for Key Stage 3 and 4 since 2006. Our research confirmed that students had a common opinion on futures ,that it is un-motivating and uninteresting. The research then went deeper as to what people wanted which turned out to be things such as financial advice, university help, job employment and other things. We took these suggestions for Futures and found that they were
The idea is not to completely wipe out futures, as it is compulsory, but to make not better and more worth-while. Our target audience is 14-18 year old BOA students as they are the ones that are participating in the futures lessons, however if our model for futures works, it then has the potential for certain aspects of it to be rolled out across more schools. From our research we have learned that students would like Financial advice and jargon, university help, job applications and so on.
We will measure the success of our futures lessons by looking at the content of the lessons. If the content changes to something that we have suggested, then our advertising campaign will have been successful.
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