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Claudette Bailey-Morrissey: Our students are largely from the Bangladeshi community, they are highly aspirational, they want to do well, they want to succeed. One of the challenges that comes with that is that the view is quite narrow at times because parents want their children to become solicitors and accountants, etcetera. What we are trying to do Central Foundation Girls' School is to open up students' views of the world of work.

There are three particular areas to our careers provision. We offer students careers education and that is delivered through the PSHE programme. So once a fortnight students have taught lessons where they learn about careers, career progressions, apprenticeships, different pathways that are available to them. The second part of our careers provision is the internal and external programmes that take place, so that could be mentoring. So in year 10 and 11 and in the sixth form students get the opportunity to have a mentor through specific programmes such as the girls network and there they are actually matched with a mentor who will support them in their career aspirations, who will guide them with their choices and it's a friend at court really.

The third element of our careers provision is the personal guidance, one to one careers interviews. That is provided through a professional careers adviser qualified to level six. But throughout the year students can book appointments with me as a careers leader, they also get the opportunity to speak to their heads of department about careers, so there's a range of people that they can go to.

Saiqua Zaneb: So the careers overview, the vision, has been shared with leadership team and the leadership team has all bought into the vision and then we've cascaded that to the whole of the teaching staff. So our vision at leadership team at school level is that all of our students have a personalised journey. So from year 7 all staff know which student wants to go on which pathway and we can then rate, organise all opportunities in the year, over the five to seven years that they're here with us to enrich that journey.

It is it is a long, long process and it is about having a two to three year roll out strategy. It's not something that happens overnight because it's a cultural change and you're changing the climate. So what I would say to every headteacher or assistant headteacher or senior team is look at what you've actually got in the school already, you'll be surprised at what you've already got. Then, I would say, look outside, look at all the opportunities that are out there. Once you've got that audit, you know what your areas of strength are, you know what you need to develop and build a strategy based on that. But include staff because they're gonna be rolling it out, it has to be a shared vision.

Student: I do think there's definitely an open dialogue, because across the school all the teachers, if they know what you wanna do, they'll definitely bring up something. If they hear about something that you might be interested in then they'll definitely bring it up, for example the law conference that I took part in I actually heard about it from my drama teacher.

At the start of your seven I was really quiet and, I didn't have many friends and I didn't really like talking to teachers very much, but it has developed over the years, and now, I think if I walk past, if I've just walked down the corridor, I can say hi to all my teachers and they'll say hi back and maybe we'll have a short conversation.

Claudette Bailey-Morrissey: I think it's always useful to have information about careers coming from the students and one of the ways that I thought we could do that is by them championing careers.

Student: A careers ambassador is when a student helps another student with their career ambitions and what they want to do in life. We just give them, like a push, what to do.

Student: It definitely boosts your confidence and it also it allows you to have a more open mindset to what you wanna be because life's not really just about a narrow path, there's always gonna be ups and downs in it, so why not try and take charge of that yourself and at least know that you've done something in order to get to a where you are.

Claudette Bailey-Morrissey: My three top tips are to join a network of other careers leaders and I think this is really invaluable - speaking to other careers leaders about their roles and how we can each learn from each other and share that really good practise.

The second thing I would suggest is to take advantage of any other CPD programmes that are available to careers leaders. So the CELP course is currently fully funded and is certainly well worth being part of.

The third suggestion I would make is identifying champions in the school to get buy in. In the short term and longer term there are always people who were keen to get involved. Certainly one of the things I found last year was having a working party, I could bounce ideas off them and they were able to bring ideas of how we can develop careers and also they were able to give me feedback about some of the things that had introduced and ways that those could be improved.