Eckington School is committed to providing high quality Careers, Education, Information, Advice and Guidance to help inspire students and to enable them to make rational informed career decisions. Eckington School aims to meet all eight Benchmarks identified by the Gatsby Foundation.

David Baldwin, the Executive Headteacher of Churchill Community College in Wallsend, refers to “teaching through a careers lens”. He views careers as not being the responsibility of a Careers Leader and a small number of teachers, but of all staff in schools and colleges. https://youtu.be/DH8zNcp4uEI

At Eckington school we would like all subject areas to do the following:

• have a prominent display that links subject learning and skill development to different careers
• develop links with businesses and organisations
• to invite alumni and other external speakers to come into school (virtually where an actual visit is not feasible)
• where appropriate to organise external visits by students to local businesses/organisations
• record careers learning opportunities for students in schemes of learning
• take part in a whole school ‘National Career Week’ where all teachers start their lesson with a careers focus, such as talking about their career pathway or showing a short film where people in a range of job roles explain the relevance of skills developed in a particular subject area to their role.
• explore the possibility of developing real projects/challenges for students with a local business or organisation e.g. a local company setting IT students the task of designing/updating their website
• consider the needs and interests of all students and ensure that information challenges stereotyping including gender and disability.

Subject teachers will be supported to develop and integrate careers learning opportunities into their schemes of learning through INSET sessions and the work of our ‘Gatsby Gang’ careers champions. This will include the opportunity at least once a year, to meet representatives of local businesses and organisations on the school site during the careers fair.

There are a range of resources on the market that suggest ways of incorporating careers learning into different subject areas. Please contact Laura Moor (Careers Lead) for further support and information.

Top Tips – some easy wins to introduce LMI into school;

• Job research – investigate a variety of careers, salaries and duties. Make links to the knowledge and skills you are teaching.
• Comparing qualifications with earnings to promote aspirations.
• Use of alumni to investigate what pathways previous students have gone onto.
• Researching employers in the area and ask Mrs Warren-Arms to make links for you.
• Use of Information from SCR Local Enterprise Partnership/Job Centre Plus.
• Any events such as mock interviews could be prepared for/debriefed and evidence collated.

Local Opportunities

With regards to local opportunities, Chesterfield Council and growth strategy have developed a programme called ‘Made in Chesterfield’ (https://www.chesterfield.co.uk/made/about-made-in-chesterfield/) which can be used to link up with Businesses who have put themselves forward to support careers learning already.

Linking lessons to the local area Labour Market would be an excellent way of raising aspiration https://observatory.derbyshire.gov.uk/

Some useful websites for teachers to use in lessons

https://icould.com/ – Lots of careers videos

https://www.careerpilot.org.uk/

https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/explore-careers

Careersbox  – Careers Videos online