At Arden College, we are committed to careers education, information, advice, and guidance ensuring students’ leave us with the right tools and values to become independent, an active citizen or employed.
We support students, with their parents and carers, to consider their future options, realise their potential and decide how their skills and experiences fit with opportunities in the local job market. We support students to prepare for their preferred destination whether that is to continue with further education, employment, training or living independently. We have a person-centred approach to student outcomes through our EHCP annual reviews process where we collaborate with all stakeholders to shape clear and ambitious targets for students to prepare for their next steps.
Everyone at Arden College is fully committed to our statutory and moral obligation to provide a holistic careers service for students in Phase 2 and Phase 3, highlighting the vocational and academic routes to their preferred career path. Each student will be given an opportunity to engage in work placements, internal and external. Students also have careers embedded into their timetable.
All career focused sessions are delivered weekly by a Phase tutor, with oversight of Phase Managers and the Vice Principal. Our aim is to ensure that students are inspired and motivated for the world of work, ensuring high achievable aspirations are considered for a range of careers available.
We collaborate closely with the local authority due to the vulnerable nature of our students, who all have special education needs and disabilities with Education, Health, and Care plans in place, ensuring that we know of all the services available to support students to access these and share this knowledge amongst our community.
There are several terms used to describe Careers Education, and there is inevitably some overlap between them.
- Employability/work skills is the delivery of learning about careers and the skills and knowledge required to become employable. This is embedded as part of the curriculum.
- Work experience/placement is the provision of opportunities to develop knowledge and understanding of work and to develop skills for employability through direct experiences of work.
- Careers information is the provision of information and resources about courses, occupations, and career paths.
- Careers advice is more in-depth explanation of information and how to access and use information.
- Careers guidance or careers counselling is a deeper intervention in which an individual’s skills, attributes and interests are explored in relation to their career options.
Some ideas to engage your students with careers are as follows:
- Discuss careers linked to specific parts of their curriculum —use this website to help you.
- Browse and use the careers lesson inserts on the world of work website.
- Utilise STEM careers resources.
Other useful links:
- BBC Bitesize Careers
- Prospects career advice
- Springpod virtual work experience
- Barclays Life Skills
- Youth Employment teacher resources
- WorldSkills UK careers advice for young people
- Working Options
- Citizens Advice
- GOV UK Benefits
Request support from your Careers Leader to bring in a guest speaker to talk to students about careers or to deliver part of a lesson.
Arden College’s Vision
To ensure students, their parents, and carers, are informed and prepared to achieve aspirational next steps into independence, becoming an active citizen and gaining employment/further study towards a career.
Strategic objectives:
- All students, parents, carers and teachers have access to careers information, advice, and guidance
- All students are accessing and engaged in a meaningful and developmental Careers Education curriculum programme
- All students’ transition to a variety of positive destinations.
View our careers strategy document here.