Debra Baldock: I think it's absolutely crucial that all children are able to flourish and to find something that they really want to do and that they can do, so careers for me is absolutely vital to what we're doing in education.
We're a mixed comprehensive school, eleven to eighteen, and we serve a wide catchment area. So our intake is as broad as you could possibly imagine. We've got a communication disorder unit on site for children on the autistic spectrum and a thriving sixth form which we work with in partnership with another local comprehensive school.
Our careers programme starts in year 7 with a one-to-one interview with each child and their parents to talk about target setting and to talk about any barriers to learning. That's repeated again, one-to-one interview in year 9 to talk about the option choices. That's repeated again in year 10 to talk about targets again and any career aspirations they have. And again in year 11. So the investment of time is what really makes our provision work. We've found over the years that a blanket careers programme is absolutely no good, it needs to be tailored to each child and their family.
Rosa: They've treated each of our children as individuals, they haven't had a kind of fixed idea of how they were going to progress and what they should do.
Debra Baldock: Everything we do is bespoke. We've got careers provision in our school development plan. The careers lead is seconded to the senior management team, I line manage the careers lead, so careers has got a very high profile in the school, but also the staff that I've got are completely aware of how important it is to their subject areas to really talk to the children about careers.
Hayley Jacobs: For our gravity racing project we look at raising aspirations of lots of pupils throughout the school and it's a very bespoke to identify pupils to not only raise aspirations, but to either work on self esteem or put them on a career path which they're actually interested in. We build a go-kart from scratch and then we race on a downhill derby.
Rosa: Obviously you need to learn maths and English and all that kind of thing, but there's a lot more to life, there's teamwork and there's social interaction and getting involved in projects and building things, so a project like this means they have the opportunity that they wouldn't have otherwise.
Ciara Hand: Our enterprise and employability challenge, challenges students to work in teams to pitch an innovative product idea to the museum that reflects the National Museum's collections and museum sites. So, working with Bryn Celynnog comprehensive on this project has been fantastic. It's given us an opportunity to engage with students and to help develop their essential employability skills like; creativity, personal effectiveness, digital literacy. So it's had a really positive effect for the students involved and for us as an employer.
Matt Nelson: The biggest challenge for us also can be persuading students that they can look at going to and can aspire to elite universities and also that there's a whole wealth of universities open to them, which, traditionally, many of those students perhaps don't look at.
Student: I'd like to study medicine and it's very competitive, which means I need a lot of experience to put on my application. During my time in sixth form my teacher, Mr Nelson, has helped me get work experience in neuro surgery. Also as well my teacher, Miss Thomas, has emailed me a lot of opportunities that I can apply for myself. A lot of the opportunities I wouldn't have been able to have got on my own and I needed the school support to do so.
Hayley Jacobs: Personal career guidance is really key to making this work. So we have a software programme where it is in the hands of the pupils, they literally have an app where they can actually request career guidance so when that's put into place we pick them up and we take a look at actually what their needs are, and again, they're then signposted. We use 成人快手 Bitesize, we go to careers Wales, we look our youth engagement and participation service and then give very bespoke guidance to that pupil. We use 成人快手 Bitesize, especially within a sixth form provision, as a guidance when they're doing research, but we also use it aimed at particular areas of the curriculum, they can look at it when they're doing research and looking for what kind of jobs are out there.
Hayley Jacobs: Our Bryn Parliament is really key to ensure that our careers is really embedded, not only throughout curriculum, but it has pupil voice and it is pupil led because we need to know, our staff, what our pupils actually need. Every meeting we have, careers is actually on the agenda and we look at our Gatsby careers benchmarks to ensure that we're meeting those and the ones we're not actually meeting and is then open floor discussion as to what we can do to improve that and what the pupils would like to see from that.
My top three tips would be really invest the time, ensure that you've mapped out really from the start cause that is really crucial to making it work. Look at your partnerships and develop those, for us its our local education authority and they've really being key for us to make it as successful as it has been so far. And really don't do it alone, you know it's not a one person role it has to be a whole school approach it's really not going to work otherwise.
Visiting a school in Wales that starts its careers programme in year 7 with a one-to-one interview with each child and their parents, where aspirations, targets and any barriers to success are discussed.
This is one of five films from a 成人快手 Teach collection profiling a range of schools and careers practitioners across the UK.
More from this collection:
How do you create a personalised careers journey for every student? video
A look at an all-girls school in London, where the whole leadership team buys into the school's careers vision.
How do you meet the careers needs of a diverse catchment area? video
A look at a secondary school in the South Midlands, where a diverse catchment area means a broad careers programme is needed to meet every student's needs.
Delivering careers education, guidance and experience of work to students with additional needs. video
A look at the creative ways a special school for students with moderate to complex needs provides careers guidance.
How can we encourage children to raise their career aspirations from as early as age 5? video
Profiling a primary school in Northern Ireland to explain how careers can be linked to areas of the curriculum in primary education.
成人快手 Bitesize Careers. collection
Click here to explore the 成人快手 Bitesize Careers website. Bitesize Careers is designed for your students and covers the world of work with advice from people who've found the right path for them. The site features over 300 job profile videos, spanning industry sectors, offering case studies and peer-led insights into the world of work.
