Careers

West Craven High School is committed to ensuring all of our students have access to highly impartial careers advice and to a range of employers who can support them in considering their future. To help us do this we align our Careers Plan to the Gatsby Benchmarks.

The vision for the development of Careers Education across our school is to provide the very best opportunities to enable our students to make informed and incisive decisions throughout, and beyond, their school life. By using the Gatsby benchmarks as a framework of best practice we have a Careers Education Programme that meets the needs of our ever-changing cohort of students, providers and labour market landscape. Our careers education promotes equality of opportunity, celebrates diversity and challenges stereotypes whilst inspiring, raising aspirations and giving our students an optimistic outlook on life and their place in the world of work.

Careers education at West Craven High School is both bespoke and unique to our school and is reviewed on an annual basis to meet the needs of our students based on our monitoring and evaluation processes. We are committed to providing a coherently planned and sequenced programme that reflects our school’s context and core values. Our programme is designed to entitle all learners to develop their knowledge, skills, understanding and cultural capital they need to go on to destinations that meet their aspirations and interests. With this in mind we aim:

To provide impartial and independent advice for all students
To prevent students leaving and becoming NEET
To contribute to strategies for raising achievement, especially by increasing motivation, attitude to learning and attendance
To support inclusion, challenge stereotyping and promote equality of opportunity
To encourage participation in continued learning including higher education, further education and apprenticeships
To develop enterprise and employment skills
To reduce drop out from and course switching in education and training
To contribute to the economic prosperity of individuals and communities
To meet the needs of all our students through appropriate differentiation
To focus students on their future aspirations and opportunities
To involve parents and carers
To support the raising of the participation age and assist with positive destinations for all pupils post 16
To meet the needs of our current cohort of students across each year group
To use current LMI to enable students, staff and parents to engage actively with local and national CEIAG information, so that they can increase their knowledge and understanding about the world of work.
To use students' parents, staff feedback to reflect on our current provision in order to develop our future CEIAG programme
To provide additional support to specific vulnerable groups such as SEND and pupil premium
All stakeholders have a clear understanding of CEIAG and rationale and vision
To monitor and evaluate current provision in order to ensure our programme is quality assured in line with other curriculum areas
To share best practice with other schools within Pendle Education Trust to ensure reflection and development of own programme
To ensure all students actively engage with an CEIAG tracking platform to support them in making informed choices about their career development plan

Implementation

Our careers programme is taught via bespoke activities, subject curriculum and extracurricular activities, and a wide range of enrichment activities.

Careers education is delivered by a wide range of providers such as our independent and impartial Careers Advisor, teachers and support staff, FE Colleges, Universities, Apprenticeship providers, visiting speakers, employers and employees. This delivery includes bespoke workshops, assemblies, work visits, work experience, mock interviews, careers fairs, drop down days and via subject curriculum. Our students are supported and encouraged to explore possible pathways they may take in the future, to ensure they have the very best start in life. Our staff receive regular CPD to support them in embedding employability skills into their subject areas. Our parents can access our schools website which provides clear links to a range of careers CEIAG related events and information about local market information (LMI) to college applications to Apprenticeships. Parents are also encouraged to attend our CEIAG information evenings and parents’ evenings.

If you are a local employer and would like to support our careers education programme at West Craven please contact our careers lead Mr James Brook.

To view our Careers Policy, please click here.

Please click on the tabs on the left hand column above for further information about our careers education programme.