Last week Emily and Jemma from the Isle of Wight Coastal Scheme team within the Environment Agency paid a visit to our year 12 and 13 Geography students. They came in to update us on the improvements to the sea defences along Sandown Bay.

It was great to hear the professionals talking about coastal defences using language and ideas that we teach at The Island VI Form. It was also very exciting to hear plans for increasing biodiversity by 20% along the new flood defence schemes. We were astonished at how long the stakeholder consultation takes and the time between getting the idea through to finding funding, to then actually completing the work.

A number of our students were inspired by the career routes into the Environment Agency. Not only did students hear from an apprentice but they were also given information on the funded degrees in flood defence engineering. Emily showed us lots of photos of her working in the field on incidents as well as fun rafting and camping as part of the LGBT+ group at the Agency. It looked like a lot of fun!

We are very grateful to the officers for taking time out of their busy schedule to come speak with our students.

Our Year 13 students, who are studying BTEC level 3 foundation diploma in forensic investigations have been researching and learning how to process a crime scene.

Last week we had a guest speaker from the Criminal Prosecution Service (CPS) visit us to go through the different types of evidence and how they are presented in court. Detailing the specific procedures required to maintain continuity and preservation of evidence and how to present this in court.

This week the students took part in a mock crime scene. The exercise is an important part of the qualification and saw our students take charge of a crime scene from cordoning off the area, diligently photographing and logging evidence and then finally correctly collecting and tagging the evidence ready to be transferred to the laboratory for processing.

All students passed the activity with flying colours and now have the task of writing up the report to support the exercise. 

A group of Geology and Geography students from Island VI Form along with Mrs. Allen, were welcomed to Portsmouth University Open day last Saturday. The university funded our travel and we were met and greeted from the ferry and taken to the main buildings where Earth Science and Geography are taught.

We chose to look at Earth Sciences, Geography and Environmental Sciences and learnt about each of the courses that the students were interested in. The students were then given a tour of the department facilities. The course content was exciting with a big emphasis on work place skills and experiences as well as the in-depth knowledge of how Earth works. There were lots of opportunities for international travel, some of it funded within the course, as well as work placements and lots of fieldwork and site visits.

The students commented on how it was great to be able to visit the university with their peers and get a feel of student life in the city (and Greggs sausage rolls!). We also found out about the wealth of support on offer to students from the Wellbeing Service and the Student Disability Advice centre where students can apply for a range of support from IT packages to counselling to help them to achieve their goals.

The next step is to get those applications in and Student Services at VI Form are offering weekly help sessions with UCAS applications. The staff at Portsmouth commented on how attending an open day was an important factor when they decide who to offer places to. We are also setting up an outreach opportunity where staff from the University will come to visit VI Form to stretch and challenge our geography and geology students.

There are fantastic degree courses on offer at a range of universities and excellent career opportunities out there for Geology and Geography students. We hope that students will take the time to visit different universities and look at all the options available to them over the coming months.