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Careers and essential skills education at the Chiltern school
For all our young people, Careers education at the Chiltern school is underpinned by our curriculum drivers of emotional health and wellbeing, communication and independence. In our school context a ‘career’ is defined as a learning journey through life and begins as soon as the young person joins our school. Through personalised learning plans, we work to ensure that all pupils are prepared with the skills they need to achieve their personal potential whilst being prepared for transition into their next best step and for adulthood.
To ensure high quality careers education, our Careers Leader holds a qualification in Careers Leadership at Level 7 and is a qualified Careers advice and guidance counselling at Level 6. This enables us to provide young people with impartial, customised advice and guidance onsite, in a way that is accessible to them, supporting pupils to communicate their voice within the decision making process and to be better informed of the choices and pathways available to them when they leave school, including where meaningful, future technical and training pathways. Pupils receive a minimum of one advice and guidance meeting before academic year 12 and another meeting before they leave school with the flexibility to respond to need and have additional meetings. This information is shared with families and contributes to the annual review. Pupils and families discuss future hopes and aspirations within their annual review meeting from Early Years until they leave us.
Personalisation is core to the career’s programme and delivery is tailored to each individual, their aspirations and long-term outcomes. This allows for personal progression so that each young person can move forwards within their personalised careers learning journey into adulthood at a pace that is suitable for their needs, acquiring skills that will support them in their adult lives.
The careers programme is adapted for each educational phase and for each of our three curriculums. It includes how we, at the Chiltern school aim to achieve the refreshed 2024 Gatsby benchmarks and adhere to the updated 2025 Statutory guidance from the Department of Education that is structured around the revised benchmarks for schools, colleges and independent training providers on careers education. Our careers curriculum supports young people to further their knowledge of the labour market and/or local offer and seeks to build character, soft skills and self-awareness and builds a positive attitude to change and new learning- all attributes that will support them within their adult lives.
We actively work to meet the eight Gatsby benchmarks and for whom it is meaningful for, we provide an enriching and vibrant targeted careers curriculum for pupils to engage with practical, work related opportunities to learn and build on vocational skills to build careers readiness. Pupils from phase 1 take part in annual Business and Industry days where they learn about particular industry sectors of personal interest and the job roles within these industries, learning through practical and engaging role play experiences and participate in a range of enterprises. Our post 16 pupils run an in school cafe and lunch service as well as host a weekly market within our local town centre to sell second hand items and the enterprise items they have made in school or grown within their horticultural lessons.
Young people also participate in careers related activities that include family engagement being part of their learning such as active week long enterprise projects and sell their products at open doors enterprise fayres and STEM days. As a school we also organise an annual pupil and parent Careers fayre for our young people and their families to meet with different next step education providers, alternative providers, support services, employers and training providers.
For whom it is appropriate, targeted pupils from Phase 2 and 3 have opportunities to be supported to access a minimum of two weeks worth of work experience over their school career and are supported to do so by an accompanying work experience Learning support assistant.
Pupils also benefit from multiple employer engagements which they encounter either through visiting businesses and employers off-site in situ and through meeting with employers who visit pupils for specialist careers workshops held in school. These encounters and targeted careers lessons are delivered by our school’s Work -related Learning Lead.
Our careers curriculum cordially challenges stereotypes and seeks to support social mobility. We work with many employer partners to respond to individual interest and have regular work experience access set up with Cancer research, Apple, The Foodbank, Splash park cafe and Amazon. Each year a cohort of our learners have the opportunity to engage with our regular careers partners: the Jobcentre plus support for schools department of work and pensions (DWP) come into school to provide a 6 week employability and careers workshops which include mock interview sessions and are adapted especially for our learners, Willmott Dixon delivers a 6 week sustainability project, the RSPCA, Borras Construction and the Bedfordshire NHS careers support for schools through the foundation trust also regularly work with us.
The named Careers lead with responsibility for careers education at the Chiltern School is Jo Scott – jscott@chiltern.beds.sch.uk
Please see the following documents with links that give more information about how we embed careers education at The Chiltern School.