Career Lead: Sara-Jayne Hawes

Linking in with the wider curriculum and PSHE sessions, the Greenwood Academies Trust Careers and Employability Strategy aims to provide all young people, in all of our academies, with a stable programme of inspirational careers activities and opportunities in order to develop important employability skills.

Using the Gatsby Benchmarks for Good Career Guidance, careers leads in all academies strive to provide a varied offer, to pupils of all ages, which is relevant to the local labour market and job opportunities that are likely to exist for our school leavers.  We are working in partnership with Career Mark to provide external validation of the Gatsby Benchmarks through the Quality in Careers Standard.

 

Last year, our career driver has been to share with the children what their teaching staff did before working at Rushden Primary Academy. This display board allows the children to try and match up the adult with the job they once did.

With the help of the Skills Ambassadors, children can also use their inference skills to link the job with a short description.

So far, nobody has guessed that I (Miss Hawes) used to work in a bakery!

At RPA, we firmly believe in encouraging aspirations. Therefore, every class is asked to share what their aspirations are for the future. This is tracked and addressed every term to discover what interests change and how we can best support children to make these dreams come true. Knowing this information and having a reference point on the door of each classroom, allows the adults to directly challenge children to complete certain tasks that might support their job aspiration in the future.

Furthermore, during the Spring term in 2023, RPA had some lovely visitors from HSBC come to explore the understanding of money with every child across the school (from EYFS to Year 6). Within every classroom, an age specific task was launched for every child to conquer. Some children explored ways to plan their own birthday party under a budget, some helped some furry friends learn what the different coins represented and some investigated ways to save their pocket money and the benefits of not just blowing it all on sweets! Every child enjoyed the experience and surprisingly was rewarded for their efforts as we received the HSBC Smart Money Award 2023. We were given a beautiful trophy, which we will cherish as a reminder of this event. Thank you HSBC for identifying the excellent children we have at RPA!

 

Career's Week 2023/2024

This year, our Career's Event was bigger and better than last year! In total, we had 27 opportunities available for our pupils to choose from. The 27 options included local business volunteers, class teachers with hidden talents, as well as our emergency services.

The children were immersed in an afternoon of fun, where they learnt about the skills and pathways they needed to take in order to follow their dreams. The volunteers had then pre-planned activities for the children to complete. These tasks were hands-on experiences and gave every child a real life situation to deal with. For example, our PCSO created a crime scene for the children to solve, the project manager set the task of the children building a business plan for a new burger restaurant, the teachers engaged in a learning walk, the postmasters delivered important mail across the school and the first-aiders are now able to perform CPR in an emergency! After the activity, children could ask all of their important questions that they had planned the day before, to ensure they fully understood the roles of the career options they'd chosen!

It was a fantastic afternoon, and we appreciate every single person that gave up their afternoon!