Careers & Employability Offer
Preparing our young people for life beyond Foxwood has always been central to the work we do. Foxwood has a long and successful history of helping students develop their understanding about the world of work; from finding out about what people do in different jobs, to a wide range of work experience and entrepreneurial activities. For example:-
- Fundraising
- Sweet Treats – sweet selling both within the Academy and to local outlets
- Volunteering in a range of roles within a local care home
- Roles within the school office and supporting the caretaker
- Car washing
The Preparing for Adulthood ‘Employment' strand of the curriculum is already highly developed.
The Government’s new Careers Strategy (December 2017) www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-strategy-making-the-most-of-everyones-skills-and-talents has given us the opportunity to review our offer using the Compass Toolkit and to develop it further to ensure we are covering all of the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks, http://www.talentinocareers.co.uk/send-gatsby-benchmark-toolkit.pdf
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Careers strategy: making the most of everyone’s skills and talents - GOV.UK The careers strategy is part of the government’s plan to make Britain fairer, improve social mobility and offer opportunity to everyone. See the statutory guidance Careers guidance and access ... |
Whilst we acknowledge that all of our students may not make transition into in paid employment, we do believe that all of our young people and their parents/careers will need support when planning for the future, beyond their time at the Academy.
The Academy has a designated Careers Leader, Lindsey Norton, whose role is to co-ordinate all the careers and employability activities across the Academy.
Email: lnorton@foxwood.notts.sch.uk Telephone: 0115 9177202
In addition to the work done within the classroom, all students in Year 9 and above have access to independent impartial careers advice and guidance from a fully qualified and registered Careers Advisor, Lynn Addison Ideas4Careers Ltd.
Our Careers Advisor works with all groups of students and runs one-to-one ‘interviews’ for individuals. The interviews are adapted to the individual needs of the student e.g. conversation, using symbols, drawing and with or without TA support.
They provide the opportunity for each young person to think about and voice what they would like to do Post 16 or 18 and what their career aspirations might be. Students might need information about the range of options available to them, thinking about what a job might involve or checking out what skills or qualifications they may need. A careers action plan is then written which is fed into the EHCP reviews for each student and actioned accordingly.
We have recently set up links with the Careers and Enterprise Company and now have a Careers and Enterprise Advisor who works closely with Laura Wright (14-19 Phase Leader). Last academic year we were successful in a bid for funding to help expand the range of work experience/training opportunities, outside of the Academy. This grant has paid for our students to attend weekly college courses at Clarendon College this academic year.
This academic year we will be working on developing our links with local employers so that students will have the opportunity to hear from real employers what skills they are looking for, and what types of jobs are available locally. We also hope to involve them in mock interviews.
In February 2020 we will be holding another Transition Event at the academy. Our 14-19 Phase Leader, Laura Wright is currently in the process of organising this event and inviting a range of education and employment opportunity providers to allow parents/carers to begin to find out the range of provision on offer. In October 2019 we also held an informal ‘coffee morning’ focusing on Transition where parents/carers where able to find out more about the support available to young people with their transition from Foxwood Academy. We have had extremely positive feedback from parents/careers, external providers and staff about these events and plan to continue holding these events next academic year.
Project SEARCH
At Foxwood Academy some of our learners go on to DFN Project SEARCH. DFN Project SEARCH is a one year programme designed for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities who aspire to get into paid employment.
This information will be reviewed in February 2020.
