Aspire and SWASH Aspire is a partnership of schools and FE colleges in Worcester City, Droitwich and Martley who work with each other and local organisations with the shared purpose of supporting all young people in the area to unlock and achieve their potential. In particular, the partnership seeks to support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable students in the area. The partnership has existed since the 1980s and the consortium team support a wide range of network groups as well as managing projects for the partnership. In South Worcestershire, a similar partnership, SWASH, exists between the high schools and FE colleges, and the Aspire consortium team also assists this partnership in its work to support young people living in South Worcestershire.   These partnerships come together under the South Worcestershire Network

The journey towards an AP Free School Six years ago, all the schools belonging to the two partnerships took steps to reduce the rate of permanent exclusion in KS4 and to increase the outcomes for this cohort. The consortia use a number of providers across South Worcestershire to provide a variety of opportunities and experiences for young people who have not been successful in their mainstream school. We have moved to a permanent base on Bridgwater Road near Sixways where we have access to support services and our own team of dedicated, experienced and expert staff to expand the opportunities we can offer and to support those organisations already providing for our young people. An application made by the consortium director with 4 founding schools and supported by the other schools in the Network was submitted in December 2013 and, following a successful interview in March, we opened in September 2014. Now in our second year we are growing from strength to strength in terms of pupil numbers, commissioner confidence and establishing a stable place in the County for the work we do and the service we provide. We have been and continue to be, supported every step of the way by advisors from the DfE in developing confidence in our capacity to deliver what is a genuinely transformational approach to supporting some of the most challenging students across our schools. 120 full time equivalent places reflects the demand from the schools for a mixture of full time and part time places. The vision is to provide full or part time alternative provision based on a core curriculum and a range of high quality vocational provision supported by work experience for KS4 pupils and to provide well run, rigorously assessed and evaluated refocus interventions for KS3 pupils with excellent in-house and in time, outreach, support workers.