In Year 10 we offer our pupils the opportunity to take part in the Work Experience Scheme. A work experience placement gives our pupils the chance to see what a job is like first hand, to broaden their horizons, develop confidence and learn new valuable life skills.
A placement can help pupils discover the career of their dreams, and identify talents they didn’t know they had. Sometimes it can also help them to discover that their dream job isn’t quite so ‘dreamy’ after all.
Our current Year 10’s have recently completed a very successful week in a variety of organisations and roles; Law firms, Architects, Tea rooms, Veterinary Practices, Police Force, Retail, Garages, Aviation, Publishers, Stables, the West End - the list of placements gets more extensive and exciting each year.
Feedback from pupils has been incredibly positive, with many keen to tell me in great detail what their placement entailed. Most have been reassured that their perfect job has been what they expected and more, and that their desire to pursue it as a career has been reinforced. For those who undertook a placement that was not linked to their career aspirations they have still returned to school with more confidence, stronger social skills and an awareness of who they are as a person.
I have also received reports from employers who couldn’t wait to tell me how excellent our pupils were, how hard they worked whilst on placement, and what a pleasure it had been to work alongside them. Many of the reports I have received have told me our pupils are a credit to our school, with the words ‘polite, helpful, engaged, enthusiastic, positive, professional’ littering the references. One employer even told me about a pupil asking to work extra hours to ensure he finished the tasks set him.
However the one of the best reports I received ended with ‘and he even gave us biscuits’. Nice work Jacob!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Year 10 pupils for being such great assets to our school. Despite it being quite difficult to secure a placement for many, they all engaged in the Work Experience Scheme with such positivity and self-motivation, I couldn’t be prouder.
Mrs Emma Conway
Careers and Enterprise Coordinator