Careers Information
At St Edward’s we believe that careers education plays a major part in helping young people choose pathways that suit their interests, abilities and individual needs. A robust careers programme helps avoid disengagement, puts school learning into a wider and more relevant context, and helps raise aspirations.
Effective careers education should ensure that students develop the skills and attitudes necessary for success in adult and prepare them for the changing nature of the world of work. It should develop students' awareness of the wide variety of education, training and careers opportunities both locally and nationally.
We also believe that careers education is set in the context of vocation; and we aim to help every child reflect on their unique calling – how they will use their God-given gifts and talents to live life to the full. We believe that our school should do far more than merely prepare students for examinations, and we seek to form well-rounded individuals, who know themselves and their own strengths and areas for development. We also aim to support parents and carers in advising and supporting their child.
Lead Staff
The lead staff for careers education are Mr Stuart Keene, Assistant Headteacher (skeene@st-edwards.poole.sch.uk) and Mrs Nicola Ruby, Careers Manager (nruby@st-edwards.poole.sch.uk).
More information can be found here: Careers Policy (link to updated careers policy here – waiting for link for SK.
Careers Advice and Guidance
Part of the careers education that is on offer to all students at St Edward’s is expert careers advice. This is an important part of careers education as it allows students to reflect upon their futures and make informed decisions about what their next steps will be. Every student is offered a careers interview to discuss their own career pathway beyond school by the end of year 11. Students are encouraged to explore all their options and we welcome visits from employers and providers. More detail can be found on our Provider Access Statement to see when it may be suitable to share careers information with our planned student events.
How do we measure effectiveness?
As a school we are constantly reviewing our careers education to ensure that it is the best that it can be. We judge the education that we provide against the Gatsby benchmarks of effective careers education and guidance. We also involve student voice in monitoring the quality of the careers advice and continually monitor feedback from staff, students, employers and other education provider as well as parents and carers, following a careers activity. Finally, we look at the future destinations of our school leavers as a guide to the effectiveness of the careers advice that we have provided.
We also work hard to ensure education and training providers can access pupils to talk about technical education and apprenticeships. We invite education and training providers to a number of events in school so that our students have a wide range of information available to them. See our link to the Provider Access Statement above for information about events where you could share information in relation to technical education and apprenticeships. We will review the published information at the start of each academic year.