Careers Week

Careers Week was all about the world of work and careers.  It also focused on what opportunities there will be for everyone in the future, whatever that future may look like.
 
The week kicked off with an assembly delivered to the Lower School on Monday and the Senior School on Tuesday.  The assembly, delivered by Mr Benskin, focused on the roles we are all currently playing in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what this means for the workplace of the future and which jobs will cease to exist in the very near future and those that may emerge.
 
Did you know that in 3 years’ time 50% of all the current workforce will need to be upskilled or re-skilled in order to meet the demands of the new workplace?
 
Many key skills that our students exhibit will hold them in good stead for the future, for example with IT and computing skills, collaboration and teamwork and having an inquiring mind.  
 
The Lower School spent some time this week researching jobs in the NHS, those that go beyond being a doctor or a nurse.  Today we were fortunate to have a qualified Mental Health Nurse, Isabella O’Higgins, come to the school to present and speak to our Lower School about her journey into the health service and what led her to decide to work in the health service.  We had many interesting and insightful questions from the girls and our Key Stage 3 students came away knowing a little more about other careers and professions that they perhaps never knew anything about or had never previously heard of.
 
In addition to this, the Lower School have been submitting entries to the annual Step into the NHS competition, where they research a career in the NHS and present a job description and a job advertisement, selling and explaining the benefits and merits of working in such a career.  A fantastic entry from Year 9 has already been submitted, which the other students have seen as an excellent example of research and presentation work.
 
There was also a fun club this week, where many Lower and Senior School students came to develop their key skills in presenting, learning new careers terminology and completing wordsearches and crosswords based on many different lines of work; including racing careers, careers at sea and careers in the health service.
 
The Senior School focused their attention on their next steps into university and preparing for employment.  Mr Ferguson from Blowleaf came into school this week to deliver his insights into CV writing, what makes a personal statement or letter of application stand out from the crowd and how to make the job application process a success.  He also kindly offered the key features of his Careers Service website to all our Senior School students to help them ‘hear a career’ and find out more about successful application and interview techniques.
 
On Wednesday Ms Ormesher ran a CV clinic with Mr Ferguson and they helped ‘fix’ some of our Sixth Formers CVs and gave them invaluable advice on how to structure a CV and what to include in it so it works more as a ‘passport’ to a job and not merely an application.  
 
This week was also enriched by the addition of Ms Beauchamp delivering a remote talk from the USA, where she spoke to our Year 8 and Year 9s about the emerging job markets and which jobs are in danger and which jobs will be in high demand in the future.  Linking to the assembly that was delivered, Ms Beauchamp also spoke about the importance of key skills and employability skills which can be developed and adapted to suit the needs of any future careers that may not already exist.  
 
Thank you to all the students and for your contributions, to the members of staff and our fantastic guest speakers who all made our Careers Week such an insightful experience and such a success.