“The reason I chose this course is because it will help me progress into my future career. Before I chose this T Level course, I was studying Art and Design at St Margaret’s Campus for a year, but I realised that the Art course wasn’t suited to me and that it became more of a lacklustre hobby than something I wanted to do as a career and didn’t want to continue with. Therefore, I thought about what I really wanted to do over the summer holidays and the strengths that I had that include being empathic, hardworking and wanting to help people and I realised how working in the healthcare sector, taking care of others is something that I really want to do.

“I originally was thinking of choosing the BTEC Health and Social care course but then when looking on the website, I found this T Level course which was interesting because it is more detailed and specialised to nursing, which I thought would be more beneficial to learn about than a Btec course and would be better for my future career and development. I became more attracted to choosing the T Level course after speaking with the career advice team at the college over the phone and they explained my options which helped me understand. They explained that because T Levels are so new there is not much information about universities taking T level students on yet. This worried me when I was picking the course because I didn’t want that to prevent me going to university, but I took the risk of choosing the course and am glad I did.

“Personally, I am really enjoying the course and I look forward to going to college to learn new things that are very useful to me and my understanding of taking care of others properly. It suits my learning style very well; I like making notes at home and the booklets we have been given are useful because it keeps each element of the course organised. I feel as though we have learnt a lot already. The course moves very fast, and some lessons do go very quick with a lot of new information to take in at once, which can be overwhelming, so it’s important to keep up.

“Also, many of my friends on the course previously studied health and social care at GCSE, so they already know some of the information that is involved in this course, but I did not and have no previous knowledge of health and social care. This scared me to start off with because I thought I would be completely lost, but the tutors have explained things like safeguarding and other social related concepts really well which is easy to understand seeing as I have never done this before. I am comfortable in the way we are currently learning but I am looking forward to learning more practical aspects of the course like the Ward they are setting up in the D block, which means we can put what we have learnt into practice. I am also looking forward to starting my placement, which I start this Thursday at the MS therapy centre, which is new to me as I haven’t done a placement before.

“After finishing this course, I am hopeful to go onto university to study paramedic science to become a paramedic with the ambulance service. I am not sure which university to choose yet and I am also looking at paramedic apprenticeships and keeping my options open as it’s only the first year of the course, but it’s something I am really passionate about, which is why I’m willing to work so hard on this course. I would recommend this course and Leicester College to other students because the college is very supportive, and the T Level course is specialised which makes you understand things in more detail and learn a lot of valuable information that you can take onto a future career.”

Kaci Holt, studying Health and Science T level