Staff-Career Guidance
Welcome to Millom School’s careers information for staff. This section of the website has been specifically designed to provide you with key information for supporting our students with careers education, information, advice and guidance.
Gatsby Benchmarks
In 2013 the Gatsby Foundation commissioned a report to research pragmatic actions to improve career guidance in England. As a result of this study a document was produced in 2014 entitled ‘Good Career Guidance’, which outlined 8 benchmarks for schools to use as a framework for improving careers provision. Following this the DfE released statutory guidance in October 2018. The Government’s expectation is that all schools meet all 8 benchmarks by the end of 2020. Millom School’s Careers Strategy (updated annually) outlines our vision for careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG), our progress against the Gatsby benchmarks and an action plan to further develop careers provision for our young people.
The benchmarks are:
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
Three times a year the school carries out a self-evaluation tool called Compass, which produces a percentage completion figure for each benchmark. This data feeds into the Furness cluster of schools, as well as County level data and national data. The DfE are using this data to track careers provision in schools.
Cumbria Careers Hub
In January 2019, we became part of an exciting pilot to transform the careers education in England when Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership launched a new county-wide Careers Hub, one of only 20 in England. This Hub is a group of 40 schools and colleges working with universities, training providers, employers and career professionals with the objective of better preparing young people for the workplace. The Hub will support schools in achieving the Gatsby benchmarks, particularly by helping to secure better links between schools and employers. As a result of our involvement in the Hub, we will meet our Enterprise Coordinator and Enterprise Adviser on a regular basis, who will help us review our school careers strategy and support us with continuously improving our provision. Our Enterprise Adviser is a senior human resources manager from Sellafield.
The curriculum and CEIAG
The curriculum rationale and learning journey documents should map out how a subject plans to incorporate elements of careers education and information into lessons. Each subject should aim to include some elements of careers provision at least once per year for each year group 7-13.
Ideas for incorporating CEIAG into lessons or schemes of work include:
Exploring labour market information with your class as a starter or plenary e.g. using Unifrog careers library to examine relevant job profiles to your subject looking at average earnings and progression routes
Talking about your own experiences of employment or university
Setting a homework task to research a job role or industry
Creating an enterprise project for an individual or group
Inviting an employer in to talk to the class
Having a discussion to explore workplace stereotypes and challenging this
Practicing skills for interviews
Display information from the Which? University guides for careers relevant to your subject (available online for free)
Integrating key employability skills into planning documents – planning opportunities for pupils to develop and evidence communication, leadership, teamwork etc
Half termly careers newsletters (*pdf)