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Our Trust of Schools

Careers

Intent:

The aim of our Careers Programme is to ensure that all our students are prepared for life after St James School, college, university and for the world of work. We particularly want to help students develop the skills and knowledge needed for the changing job market, which we set out to achieve through giving students a range of opportunities to engage with employers, further education and higher education providers through their time at the St James. We especially aim to address local skills shortages in IT, Data Analytics, Construction and Health & Social Care.

We are working towards all of the Gatsby Benchmarks this academic year to ensure we are providing the best preparations for our pupils. To meet these Gatsby Benchmarks, our Careers Curriculum strategic objectives for the year are:

  • Organise parent engagement events to ensure parents know about the changing job market and the world of work and how to advise their children on these topics.
  • To track at a pupil level all the careers curriculum, visits, trips and experiences each child at the school experiences to help ensure our careers programme provides opportunities for all pupils.
  • For pupils to actively reflect on each experience they have through the use of post activity reflections.

St James School Destinations (SNAG)

Implementation:

We are very fortunate to have had a number of parents/carers that have offered to work with us to share information about the career sectors in which they work. We will be making contact with you soon to put together some plans. If any other parents/carers or organisations would like to work with us to help educate our students about the certain Career sectors, we would love to hear from you. Please email me, Mr Brown, Steve.Brown@stjamesexeter.co.uk

The CEIAG Team

At St James we have a whole school approach to careers with all staff supporting the delivery of CEIAG through the pastoral system and within curriculum areas. In addition, we have a designated CEIAG team who co-ordinate and monitor the delivery of the Careers Plan:

Useful Links

Local Colleges & Sixth Forms

Useful resources for students and parents:

  • Careerpilot is an online career learning tool which can be used to explore future career and education options.
  • icould provides career inspiration and information for young people through free access to over 1000 personal video stories, detailed job information, plus practical tips, insight and advice.
  • CareersBox is a free online library of career related videos, news and information.
  • UCAS Progress is an online search and application tool for post 16 courses.   This is the preferred method of application for some sixth form providers in Sunderland.
  • Careers Advice for Parents aims to give parents an easy-to-read overview of all the essential facts on finding jobs and apprenticeships or choosing further and higher education courses which could make a real difference to their child’s future career prospects.
  • CASCAID Parents Guide to Careers Guidance Parental Guidance offers advice and information on all aspects of the process of career choice for young people aged 13 to 25.
  • Compass Evaluation

Impact:

St James’ progress towards achieving the Gatsby Benchmarks is evaluated using the online Compass tool (as recommended in Careers guidance and access for education and training providers Jan 2018).  This is carried out regularly by the Careers Leader and our Career Hub advisor.

Provision will be regularly monitored through feedback from students, staff, governors and our partners.  This feedback is collected through our Post Activity Review sheets following key career activities and at the end of each academic year.

The effectiveness of our careers guidance will be reflected in the higher numbers of students progressing to positive destinations such as apprenticeships, technical routes, sixth form colleges, further education colleges, universities or employment.  Destination data (Dfe) is used to assess how successfully students make the transition into the next stage of education or training, or into employment and to inform about future CEIAG provision.  This is analysed by the Careers Leader with key trends and actions fed back to SLT and Governors.  Action points are also included in the school’s development plan.

We are constantly looking for new and exciting ways to introduce students to future careers. As such, the careers programme will be reviewed by Steve Brown on 21/05/2023 and annually on this date thereafter.