Transitions into Adulthood and Careers
Transitions Coordinator: Ms Jacqui Roper
jacqui.roper@stlukes.herts.sch.uk 01582 626727
At St Luke's School, we are committed to providing a planned and extensive careers programme. This is taught within the Personal Development aspect of our wider curriculum and is differentiated to suit the needs of the individual learner. It has been designed to inform and equip every student with the skills and knowledge to support their transition onto further education, training or employment.
The aim of our careers programme is to raise the aspirations of our learners and to support them in developing transferable life and social skills. We carefully consider all possible options with each individual young person with their strengths and future aspirations in mind.
We consider transition from early on so we can build confidence and social skills through working on areas of need identified in the Hertfordshire Skills Framework such as motivation, respect, resilience, organisation and teamwork. We do this by offering a programme of extended work experience, supported as necessary and monitor the impact of this.
On a practical level, we work closely with Services for Young People (was Connexions) who offer a service to provide impartial advice through professional meetings arranged during the school day by careers advisers. At these meetings, we ensure we ‘tap into’ students’ interest, strengths and aspirations to find the right work experience placement, college course and environment for success. We then produce a document offering valuable opportunities and guidance to support their next steps.
At St Luke's we are fortunate to have been working with Beverly Greenfield and Nicole Chater from SYP for a number of years.
We have strong links with local colleges, and work closely with the college transition workers, inviting them into school to meet our students, observe them in lessons and run Q & A workshops regarding college. We also arrange college taster days early in the Autumn term offering our students as much time as possible to prepare for the change. Further transition days also take place during the summer term.
All transition support workers attend Year 9 and, Year 11 EHCP (Educational and Health Care Plan) meetings giving parents and carers opportunities to ask any college related questions or share concerns. Again parents are supported and involved in the process is as much as possible, so they can, in turn, support the transition and management of significant change.
Once our students join their new setting we offer to support them closely in the initial first few weeks (if they feel they would benefit from this) to ensure a seamless move.
We keep destination data - please contact us if you require this.
Colleges our students can transition to:
- Oaklands College ( Please click HERE for a virtual tour of Oaklands College)
- West Herts College
St Luke's Strategic Development of Pupils' Employability and Work
Lower School
- Learning about people who do different jobs
- Role Play
- Learning about time - future and history
Middle School
- Learning about careers and types of employment
- Embarking on self evaluation
- Being taught about jobs and careers
- Travel training
- Time and relevance to the individual and others
- Personal Development - personal presentation and hygiene
- Transferable communication skills and how we communicate to different people in different roles
- Societal expectations
Upper School
- Visiting a range of organisations to experience where people work to broaden their understanding of types of work and places of work
- Experiencing work
- Making decisions on types of work and careers that interest them
- Reflection on skills and refinement of thinking through CV writing to present themselves effectively
- Creating a portfolio of skills and business enterprise activities to take to interviews
- Researching jobs and careers e.g. college placements, job centre visits, job searches
- Mock interviews with professionals
- Completing CVs
- Money, salaries, banking and expenditure
- Learning about tax, insurances, bills, credit and debit
- Travel training
Looking Ahead to Adulthood
- HCC Employment Support – Herts County Council run various schemes and projects to help adults with any kind of barrier into employment, including the Princes Trust.
- Work and Health Programme – Similar to the employment projects that HCC run, this programme is nationwide, run by the DwP and aims to support anyone with a barrier to employment.
- Disability Job Coaches – The job centre have job coaches who are specialists in working with people with disabilities of any kind, they can offer 1-1 support and guidance.
- Sunnyside – Sunnyside can offer work experience, training, and wellbeing groups
- Herts Opportunities Portal – This is a great resource to find any course running in Herts, they also post jobs and apprenticeships
- Supported Internships – SI’s are a fantastic way of introducing young people to the reality of what it’s like to have a job but with the support of the training provider and employer.
- ATW – This is for when someone with a barrier gains employment, they can and should apply for Access To Work. ATW will provide funding for any reasonable adjustments, equipment or anything that will ensure the job role is sustainable.
- Herts Volunteering
- Dacorum Volunteering
- CAD – Community Action Dacorum offer many services to the community, including training and sometimes employment support
- SHC – South Hill Centre are a charity and church that offer support to those who need it most within the community. SHC run various training courses, including employability focused courses. They also offer drop in-sessions twice per week to anyone that needs any kind of support, including employment support
- CAB – Citizens Advice are a great organisation that can offer a multitude of services and are brilliant at signposting.
Gatsby Profiling and Ensuring Careers and Work-Related Learning is inherent in our Curriculum
The Gatsby Benchmark is a nationally recognised system developed by The Careers & Enterprise Company used to define excellent career guidance, and helps us to measure and improve our careers provision.
To support us in delivering each of these benchmarks we work with a range of external partners including The Careers and Enterprise Company, Services for Young People and links through our fundraising team.
We also have strong links with Warner Brothers, Oakland’s and West Herts colleges, and the local community, who support our students with talks, visits and opportunities to experience programmes of real life situations.
Throughout the year, we also coordinate a number of purposeful interactions with a range of trusted visitors, offer taster opportunities at further education settings, and get involved with key events and activities, which complement the careers programme. These may include external trips to local businesses, and outdoor enterprise activities such as summer fetes, all being valuable and meaningful experiences of work.
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Gatsby Benchmarks
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St Luke’s 6/3/22 |
St Luke’s 15/6/22
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100% |
100% |
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90% |
100% |
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100% |
100% |
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100% |
100% |
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100% |
100% |
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100% |
100% |
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100% |
100% |
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100% |
100% |
Monitoring and evaluation
We meet on a regular basis with our Employment and Skills coordinator Jacquie Gascoigne, to monitor and evaluate our progress towards the Gatsby Benchmark using the online Compass tool, recommended by the Careers and Enterprise Company.
All students in years 9 and 11 have an opportunity to attend a PfA (Preparing for adulthood meeting with our SYP personal advisers Beverly Greenfield or Nicole Chater, who offer advice and guidance. They are professionals trained to provide our young people with impartial information, advice and guidance on their post-16 options such as further education, training, employment and independent living.
Our personal advisers also attend EHCP review meetings and parent consultations.
Useful Links and Resources
Providers come into our school to talk to students about the opportunities available to them. We are currently working with Dominic Johnson from Oakland’s College and Alison Hales from West Herts College, both happy to answer emails from the links below
Additional Links and Resources
Statutory guidance
Careers guidance and access for education and training providers
BTF CAREER PROVIDER ACCESS POLICY REVIEW SEPTEMBER 2023BTF CAREERS POLICY STATEMENT REVIEW SEPTEMBER 2023