Introduction
The last ten years have seen a huge increase in the amount of travel for both leisure and business purposes. Despite concerns over global warming, Britain's travel and tourism industry remains a vital and significant contributor to our economy.

How does travel and tourism help students develop as learners and potential employees?

• This course can help develop knowledge and experience in a range of directions including locational geography, customer service and employability skills.
• It will encourage learners to achieve and help them to move directly into employment or progress to college (JLC and NLC both have different travel, tourism and leisure courses and so do many universities)
• The travel and tourism sector has identified skills gaps including customer service skills, destination geography, business awareness and employability skills. This course addresses such shortage areas and encourages students to develop these competencies.

The course studied is the Edexcel BTec Level 2 Extended Certificate in Travel and Tourism. You can view the course specification by following the weblink and clicking in to specification, specification issue 3.

What will students study?
The course is made up of 6 units. Each unit is worth 5 credits and to achieve the full award students must reach 30 credits in total. Students have 5 lessons a fortnight to carry out the work, plus catch-up sessions after school on Thursdays. Year 10 units of study
Term 1 Understanding the nature and effects of world travel
Term 1 UK tourism destinations
Term 2 European holiday destinations
Term 3 Worldwide holiday destinations

Year 11 units of study
Term 1 The UK travel and tourism sector
Term 2 Understanding customer service in travel and tourism

How will students work be graded?
The course is 100% coursework (no exams) so students must make sure they keep up to date and copy up if lessons are missed. All work will be assessed by Miss Thompson and some will be verified by Mr Stiles.

Grades are PASS (CC), MERIT (BB) or DISTINCTION (AA) or DISTINCTION* (A*A*) for a whole unit:

• to achieve a 'pass' a learner must have satisfied all the pass assessment criteria (this is the P1, P2 P3 etc)
• to achieve a 'merit' a learner must additionally have satisfied all the merit grading criteria (this is the M1, M2 etc)
• to achieve a 'distinction' a learner must additionally have satisfied all the grading distinction criteria. (this is D1 etc)

All students will be given an assignment handbook at the start of Year 10 and 11. This should be kept safe as it contains all the work we will be doing.