Students who choose to study Health and Social Care at Key Stage 4 will follow the Pearson BTEC Tech Awards Health and Social Care course.

Students will study three components:

1. Human Lifespan Development
2. Health and Social Care Services and Values
3. Health and Wellbeing

Component 1: investigates how, in real situations, human development is affected by different factors and that people deal differently with life events. Students will study how people grow and develop over the course of their life, from infancy to old age, including physical, intellectual, emotional and social development, and the different factors that may affect them.

Component 2: explores health and social care services, looking at what services are available and identifying why people might need to use these services. Students will discover who is involved in providing the services and what might stop people accessing these services. They will also look at the care values the sector has to make sure people get the care and protection they need.

Component 3: looks in detail at the factors that affect health and wellbeing, learning about physiological and lifestyle indicators, and how to design a health and wellbeing improvement plan. Students will investigate the factors that can have a positive and negative influence on a person’s health and wellbeing, will learn to interpret key health indicators, and what they mean for someone’s state of health. This is turn will be used to design an appropriate plan for improving someone’s health in both the short and long-term. 

The course is assessed by both controlled assessment tasks and a two-hour examination. 

• Students will complete two controlled assessment tasks based on Components 1 and 2 of the course, worth 30% each of the final grade. For Component 1 they will complete a study looking at how people change over different life stages and how two individuals have dealt with the same life event, for example marriage. For Component 2 they will complete a review into the health and care services available in the local area and demonstrate care values in one or more simulated real life situations. 
• Students will complete a two-hour examination in which they will use the knowledge and skills they have acquired throughout the course to design a health and wellbeing improvement plan based on an individual’s health and wellbeing as detailed in a given case study. The examination will be worth 40% of the final grade. 

About 3 million people currently work in the Health and Social Care sector and the NHS are the third-largest employer in the UK. This course is great if students want to work in any of the caring professions, including nursing, midwifery, social work, occupational therapists, counsellors, youth work, charity work, care assistants and support workers to name a few.  There are also lots of opportunities into Post 16 further study, such as A levels, college courses or an apprenticeship in the health and social care sector.

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