The Thamesview Vocational Centre is now up and running following seven months to build. The centre was funded by KCC and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Gateway Knowledge Alliance and cost 1.2 million to build and equip. Vocational centres offer training programmes that are designed to 13-19 year olds with skills to help them progress into employment or further training
Thamesview students and other local Gravesham school students are all benefiting from the use of our Centre to develop their construction and motor vehicle skills.
We are aiming to extend this offer to ensure 100% capacity over the next year and develop an adult education and sixth form provision.
We place vocational education high on the agenda with every Key Stage 4 student selecting a vocational course in a variety of areas and examination levels. At present we offer Construction, Motor Vehicle, Health and Social Care, Performing Arts, Sport and Leisure, Business and ICT at BTEC and OCR National, (both Diploma and Certificate level), Vocational GCSEs, CACHE qualifications, NVQ level 1 & 2, Entry Level awards plus trade qualifications and many more recognised courses.
The extent of interest from the students is already proving a success in terms of their level of motivation and engagement when on-site undertaking their vocational course in the Centre. Students are dressed in the appropriate PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) attireincluding overalls, hard hats and steel toe boots, as students embark on learning the skills required for the Construction and Motor Industries. The equipment is supplied by Thamesview. Upstairs hosts an air conditioned computer suite with an open-plan environment for the teaching of Health and Social Care. This is a wonderful environment for experiencing ‘first hand’ the relevance of education linking to skilled work related fields. Facilities include:
Bricklaying workshop Carpentry workshop Painting and decorating workshop Motor Vehicle workshop Health and Social Care specialist rooms ICT Suite.
Thamesview Vocational Centre has been designed as a 'Centre of Excellence'
National Good Practice Details | 
As you will know from walking around the school, reading the positive news articles, and speaking to the most important figures in our community, our students, we are now a school with a reputation that we should be proud of, and one that I know will prosper in the years to come. Verification of our most recent successes and drives for improvement came from OFSTED’s visit in February 2007, where we were judged as “good” across the full range of areas observed for a subject inspection (the focus being science). 
