Careers

It is an acronym that stands for Careers Education, Information, Advice, and Guidance. It forms a central strand to the provision made to all our students from the first day of Year 7 through to their final day in Year 13 (or 11).

It is a nationally recognised careers programme that builds, through successive activities, a student’s sense of their career aspirations, employability skills, labour market information and many of the choices available to them throughout their school career. It is delivered once per week during Personal Development and ranges from the start of Year 7 through to the end of Year 13 (or 11). If you have not been able to already, ask your child what they studied this week!

At Uplands Academy we have three main stems of careers education: our assemblies and personal development programme, including the linking of subjects to career aspirations and current LMI; the embedding of careers in our main curriculum in all subjects; bespoke events aimed at targeted groups, specific to their needs, goals, and interests.

This is an acronym for Labour Market Information — data and statistics relating to employment markets, both nationally and locally.

Most importantly, be talking about careers as often as possible. For anyone who is temporarily stuck, you could begin by focusing on what they enjoy, what is likely to suit their personality and temperament best and what they are already good at.

One of the least likely methods for getting past the problem of not knowing what to do is to sit there and just think. Most of us know less than 3% of the actual jobs that exist in the world — so try instead visiting the websites of large, multinational companies and spend some time going through the webpages for their vacancy listings, student training schemes and all their departments.

Alternatively, there are several websites dedicated to searching for careers. Two of the best are:

Careers advice - job profiles, information and resources | National Careers Service and Job profiles | Prospects.ac.uk

We self-evaluate three times a year through the Compass+ evaluation tool, provided by the East Sussex Enterprise Hub (part of ESCC). This gauges our progress across the eight Gatsby Benchmarks and allows us to make adjustments towards the ultimate goal of achieving all eight. In addition, our Careers Lead meets at least once per full term with our link governor for careers, also reporting to the full board that term.

We provide our students with a full careers education, information, advice, and guidance (CEIAG) programme to ensure that they are future-focused, ready, and prepared for life after Uplands. We aim for all students to have a range of experiences, opportunities and information to help them make choices for future study and work.

In addition, all students have a careers dedicated Personal Development session, once per week throughout the school year. In this time, they complete a variety of purposefully sequenced activities to progressively develop their careers skills. This builds towards our Careers Week in Term 6, where all day every day, for one week, we put those new skills to the test.

We place great importance on students being aware of their own skills and attributes so that they can realise their full potential. Learning about and developing employability skills is vital for young people as is being able to identify the skills that they have acquired over the years. Our CEIAG programme helps our students understand employability and understand how important it is to have the right attitude and work ethic as they progress through education and training.

The school will assess the impact of its careers programmes on our students by completing an annual student survey and analysing destinations data in line with activities that they have taken part in at school. In addition, the views of students and parents will be surveyed after key events e.g. the Careers Information Evening, Future Focus days and work experience.

Furthermore, we link our programme to The Department for Education and OFSTED recommendations, and review and update our provision through feedback, evaluation and the Compass Audit tool, which is endorsed by the Careers and Enterprise Company and the East Sussex Careers Hub.

They are eight clearly defined standards that, when fully met, together form the pinnacle of careers provision within schools. You can find out more by visiting the following sites:

https://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/focus-areas/good-career-guidance

https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/careers-leaders/gatsby-benchmarks/

This is currently within the main school library. With the recent proliferation of online resources, a digital equivalent will also exist — and we often post new ones that we find on Edulink.

The Careers Lead is Mr Cunningham, who has overall responsibility for the design and delivery of the programme. 

The delivery of the STEPS programme is overseen by each form group’s tutor.

The embedding of careers in our curriculum is overseen by each Subject Leader in their respective field.

We are also visited every term by our Enterprise Adviser, Gill Langdon, who supports us with several annual events such as the mock job application and interview process.

Our Careers Leader is Mr James Cunningham, Assistant Headteacher and Head of Sixth Form (jcunningham@uplands-academy.org).  He can be contacted by the email address above, or by telephone on 01892 782135.

Any student who would like to make use of this free service should let Mr Cunningham know in the first instance. Alternatively, please feel free to contact us direct on their behalf.

You can read the guidance by following this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools. The most recent developments have centred around careers becoming more embedded within the curriculum itself, as well as forming a more coherent, linked strategy across all seven-year groups.