Capita have been in partnership with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council since 2001 on a wide reaching programme impacting across the council and contributing to regeneration within the region. As part of this relationship, Capita has also made a commitment to support education within the borough and contribute to the educational performance of key schools and students.

The programme, now in its third year, involves supporting Witton Park High School Business & Enterprise College and Darwen Vale High School in a mentorship programme to students and parents. At Witton Park High School Business and Enterprise College, Capita helped them attain “Business and Enterprise College” status, and are involved in a mentoring scheme with Year 10 pupils to help raise their GCSE expectations. We also run a scheme that provides computers to parents to help raise the aspirations of both parents and pupils.

At Darwen Vale High School, we work with the school to help improve performance in GCSE Business Studies. Six students were selected by their school, all of whom expected to receive ’unclassified’ grades in the GCSE final exams. Capita staff volunteered to mentor the students on key areas of Business Studies and helped them produce business documents such as profit and loss spreadsheets, written business reports, and marketing and advertising literature.

Achievements of the programme

Our involvement with the schools has been a great success with Witton Park High School being the second most improved school in England and Wales in our first year of working with them. Their performance also went from 32% A - C passes four years ago to 59%.The programme with Darwen Vale High School improved the potential ‘unclassified’ grades to 2 D’s and 4 C and resulted in a continued programme of support by Capita to the school.

For more infomation about The Capita Group Plc's CSR projects, please go to: