Further Information for Staff
You may find the additional links in the careers sections for parents/carers and employers useful too.
Please speak to the Transitions Coordinators, Employment Coordinator or Assistant Principal – Admissions, Engagement and Transitions, if you want to talk further about careers guidance within your curriculum area at college.
When we speak about careers, we mean supporting our students to prepare them for their best next steps and life after college. This covers a broad range of careers guidance activity, relevant to the needs of each student.
As well as our Careers Offer diagram (which you can find on this page), our Careers Hub, The Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership drafted a diagram showing what they felt were all the differing areas of our careers guidance provision across college:
LLEP Careers Diagram (PDF, 403 Kb)
You will find our Careers Policy and Provider Access Statement here.
The Provider Access Policy (PAL) tells readers about our arrangements for providers talking to our students for the purpose of giving them information about their education or training offer. This complies with the College's legal obligations under Section 42B of the Education Act 1997.
Gatsby Benchmarks
The eight Gatsby Benchmarks serve as a framework for world-class careers provision and have been adopted as part of the statutory guidance for schools and colleges on providing careers guidance.
The eight Gatsby Benchmarks of Good Career Guidance are:
1. A stable careers programme
2. Learning from career and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each pupil
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experiences of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance
The Assistant Principal and Employment Coordinator have a rolling Careers Development Plan for enhancing our careers offer in college. We assess ourselves against the Compass Audit tool each term to ensure we are meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks for good career guidance.
At Sense College Loughborough we take benchmark 5, 6 & 7 to mean experiences that support our students with their next steps. This could be encounters and experiences with employers, or it could be potential social care options or local services and organisations that students would come into contact with during their day to day lives.
This What's the Point video gives a handy albeit school perspective approach to bench mark 4.
The D2N2 Gatsby Benchmark series provides five-minute videos about each of the benchmarks.
The Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP) Careers Hub Solutions Library has a folder of resources for each benchmark.
The LLEP Careers Hub support schools & colleges develop their careers programmes. We have the support of an Enterprise Coordinator from the Careers Hub and Tim Marren, Chief Executive Officer at Peter Le Marchant Trust as our Enterprise Advisor.
The Careers & Enterprise Company works with schools, colleges and employers to help every young person find their best next step. They have a great resource directory. You can search my SEND resources; SEND Group 1, typically will not take Level 2 qualifications/GSCE's. SEND Group 2 will typically take Level 2 qualifications/GCSE's.
You can find tools and resources for all elements of the Preparing for Adulthood Framework on the NDTi website.
Preparing for adulthood (PfA) support focuses on four pathways, helping young people to achieve the best outcome in:
• Education and/or employment (maybe volunteering for some of our students)
• Independent living.
• Participating in the local community and society and having positive friendships.
• Being as healthy as possible.
The CDI's Career Development Framework describes the six learning outcomes that career development programmes should focus on to ensure students develop the career development skills that they need to have positive careers.
When looking at careers guidance activity, we should ask; how does it help our students grow throughout life, explore possibilities, manage their career, create opportunities, balance life and work and see the big picture.