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Careers education, information, advice and guidance: putting the student back at the centre of the agenda

Case study

Staff at Sharnbrook Upper School use various approaches to focus on careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG), ensuring that their students get all of the support they need to make informed decisions about how to achieve their future career choices.

Key learning

  • Sharnbrook Upper School have distributed and delegated leadership at different levels which promotes responsibility for CEIAG.
  • The school’s approaches to CEIAG are integrated and have been embedded into day-to-day school life which combines vertical tutor groups, focus days, academic tutorials and futures days.
  • There is a focus on in-house training and development for staff, sharing expertise and knowledge.

Background

Sharnbrook Upper School is a mixed 13–19 rural comprehensive (foundation) school and community college in Bedfordshire. It has trust status and forms a federation with three feeder middle schools. It is also a training school with specialism in applied learning and media arts. There are approximately 1,900 students on roll including a sixth form of over 700 students.

Key challenges

Although those interviewed could not identify any significant barriers to past developments, due to like-minded staff, there are some current key challenges for the school.

Ensuring consistency in CEIAG delivery

To ensure a consistency of approach to the delivery of CEIAG within the school.

Keeping advice to students relevant and impartial

To keep abreast of what the world of work is like and provide impartial advice regarding options.

Educating students for future careers

Skill up students to be aware of change and tune up their skills for their working life.

Continuing staff development in a climate of budget cuts

The assistant headteacher highlighted the strategic importance of maintaining a ‘finger on the pulse of the world of work’. This would ensure that advice given was relevant and current, and had implications for their training staff.

The school has built in-school capacity for delivering CPD acknowledging that budget cuts might impact on external training and development, and externally supported careers advice.

Solutions

Vision into practice

The CEIAG ethos is embedded in the day-to-day practice of the school. It is an integrated approach delivered through vertical tutoring and a number of other approaches.

  • Focus days: the school timetable is suspended for five days per year to focus on specific events or particular aspects of CEIAG, eg in Year 9 the day, ‘we can do it – your future now’ focuses on learning styles and preparation for modular/termly examinations.
  • Futures days: exploring career aspirations, for example Year 9 have half a day using fast tomato (an interactive online careers tool) and exploring post 14 options.
  • Academic tutorials: each student, their parent(s) or carer(s) and tutor meet to for discussions, for example on the options process or work experience options.
  • Vertical tutor time: planned activities to develop focus day work, eg writing CVs and work experience applications.
  • Additional activities: the school offers other CEIAG related activities and events including electives (a choice of options) for Year 12 students, providing further guidance with areas such as interview skills or personal finance.

Partnership arrangements include applied learning with the local university (Aim Higher Scheme for Years 10 and 11) and local colleges including an agricultural college. This enables delivery of BTEC and NVQ courses.

Leadership structures and approaches

CEIAG is afforded high status in the school, for example it is reflected in performance management objectives for staff. The development of CEIAG has been an evolutionary approach which included the decision to create a framework built around a vertical tutoring model because it:

  • integrates personal, social and health and citizenship education (PSHCE) with CEIAG providing greater coherence than the previous discrete areas of activity, embedding it across the curriculum
  • provides consistency of tutor support who stay with the same students for their whole school career
  • allows for peer mentoring

The school has developed a structure which promotes leadership and responsibility at different levels. Proactive steps have been made to recruit or train staff to lead and support CEIAG provision.

The leadership structure is built on clear roles and responsibilities, and high levels of trust for leaders and managers to carry these out. Regular, informal dialogue and meetings between staff at different levels are used both to create and communicate developments in CEIAG, in addition to more formal management meetings.

Focus days are led and developed by a range of staff members acting as project leaders. These project leaders assume responsibility for creating student focus booklets which are completed during the day and in subsequent tutor time.

Continuing professional development (CPD)

Staff are trained in CEIAG through staff training days, and fortnightly house meetings lead by heads of house offering flexible, needs-led training for tutors.

Other staff may also provide training, for example the applied learning manager led a session for vertical tutors on providing impartial careers advice. New vertical tutors are often assigned an experienced buddy, and new teachers are given a day’s training about vertical tutoring by the assistant headteacher.

Evaluation of impact

CEIAG provision is principally monitored through the work of its heads of house (whose work is monitored by the assistant headteacher) and focus day project leaders. Strategies include:

  • staff questionnaires issued by the applied learning manager
  • students’ work experience being evaluated through discussions with heads of house who inform the applied learning manager of key outcomes
  • student focus day evaluations through questionnaires, issued by the assigned project leader   
  • focus day project leader’s evaluation of students’ learning and tutors’ provision through focus booklet completion

Students interviewed held positive views on provision commenting that futures days ‘help us to make decisions about our lives… they hone you in to what you can do next’ (Year 11 student).

Next steps

  • Establishing an integrated and coherent programme for Years 7–9 through the federation arrangement.
  • Working more efficiently with past students in order to gain information about how they made decisions and how the school could have been more effective in its delivery of CEIAG (potentially establishing an alumni association).
  • Ensuring that the school develops students further to think about not just a job but the skills and qualities they have got.

Further information

Report written by National College research associate, Victoria Worsnop, vice principal, Hockerill Anglo-European College, Bishop’s Stortford