Generation Go comes to Neatherd High School

On Thursday 27th June 2024, we conducted two afternoon Generation Go sessions for students at Neatherd High School in Dereham, who are preparing for their upcoming work experience placements.

We had approximately 40 students across the two workshops, many of whom were familiar with using the number 8 between Dereham and Norwich either alone or with family members. Some students also had experience of using the app, but were not aware of the tracking and journey planning features available.

In both sessions, we instructed the children on the tips on how to prepare at the bus stop and be vigilant and respectful whilst on board, before demonstrating how to use the journey planning features on the website. The children then completed two planning activities, imagining that they had to travel from the school to different locations in Norwich, incorporating thinking about possible bus changes and return journeys they might have to make.

Encouraging children to plan for a specific scenario, imagining they have to be somewhere at a designated time and place, meant that they had to put themselves out of their comfort zone. It can be easy to get complacent when you are used to just catching a local service whenever the next one turns up at the weekend, but this is quite a different experience from planning for placements and appointments that have a fixed start and end time.

Overall, we are very happy with how the workshop was received by the students and we look forward to welcoming a couple of them at the Konectbus depot for their work experience placements in July. We are also offering all workshop participants a week’s free Anywhere travel, either to access their placements or to experience one of our Great Days Out by Bus over the summer holidays.

"We are very grateful to Katherine of Konectbus for coming into school and deliver this workshop to our students, they learned some very valuable life skills of how to plan bus routes effectively, track busses and buy tickets. All this knowledge will be very useful for them when they travel to their work experience placements next week."

- Robert Hodges, Careers Leader of Dereham Neatherd High School.