RAID Initiative
"Raising Aspirations; Informing Decisions."
Much of CUSU's Access work has focussed to date on Year 12s and maybe Year 11s, but this can sometimes be too late. There are many students who have no idea what university is like, have no idea that what subjects you pick at A Level can have a huge impact on what courses you can study at university and who do not realise that GCSE results are taken into account.
Therefore, the CUSU RAID initiative was launched last year, aimed at raising the aspirations of students from a younger age and providing them with the information that they need to make informed choices. The focus will be on university more generally, but obviously your Cambridge experiences are going to influence everything that you say.
What is the format? It is up to you! The aim is that students will have the opportunity to learn about university life - so you could do a 'why university?' debate, or you could do a subject workshop to give a flavour of what studying a subject at university is actually like. You could also do budgeting activities or 'A week in the life' workshops where the students have to make their own timetable. Basically, the opportunities are endless and you can really open the eyes of students and help them raise their life ambitions.
When would I do it? Whenever suits you. Most students will do school visits in the Easter, early summer or end of summer vacations, as these are the times that schools are most receptive to visits, but there are no requirements. If you'd like to arrange a visit at another time, you can contact the CUSU Access Officer for help and advice. They will be happy to contact schools on your behalf.
How can I get involved?
You can help out in a number of ways:
1. Do a visit yourself - We need people to go out into secondary schools and to talk to the students. We will provide you with all of the resources you need and most of it will involve talking from your own experience.
2. Help design the subject workshops - We want to have subject workshops written and prepared for as many subjects as possible. So if you're keen in more people finding out what ASNAC is really like or how English at Cambridge differs from English at school then help us to design the workshops.
What help can I receive to do this? CUSU has powerpoints specifically aimed at Year 9-11 students which focusses on university life more generally. We also aim to produce scripts and resources for subject workshops which you can use or edit to suit what you want to do. As always, if something does not exist, get in touch and we will do our best to put something together for you. Just contact the CUSU Access Officer.