Careers at CHS

“Students will be confident that they have well-informed and aspirational plans in place now, to enable them to achieve their best next steps and have successful careers in the future.”

Carnforth High School recognises and values Careers guidance for all our students. We are committed to empower our students to make well-informed aspirational choices about their future. Each student will receive quality, impartial careers advice and guidance, structured throughout their time at CHS. The impact of our programme is assessed regularly through student voice (including using the Future Skills Questionnaire), termly against the Gatsby Benchmarks with visits from Inspira and annually with references to leavers’ Destinations data.

The Careers Team

• Mr E McGauran – Assistant Headteacher and Careers Leader (Email: emcgauran@carnforthhigh.co.uk Telephone: 01524 732424)

In 2024/25 we are also working with ‘Career North,’ who provide impartial and well qualified Careers Advisors who visit school to provide our students with careers advice, information and guidance. Career North provide a regular presence in school, with a priority at the start of the year of speaking to every single student in Year 11 in a careers guidance meeting. Each student spends time speaking with an Advisor and the Advisor provides a personalised Actions Plan that are shared with students via Unifrog. Students in all years also have a chance to book a meeting with the Careers Advisor.

Plans and Policies

Below you can see an overview of the Careers offer at CHS within our Careers Plan Policy, as well as our Provider Access Policy.

The Gatsby Benchmarks

Every young person needs high-quality career guidance to make informed decisions about their future. Good career guidance is a necessity for social mobility: those young people without significant social capital or home support to draw upon have the most to gain from high-quality career guidance.

In 2013, Gatsby commissioned Sir John Holman to set out what career guidance in England would be like if it were good by international standards, resulting in the Good Career Guidance report. The eight benchmarks set out in the report serve as a framework for improvement in careers provision and have been adopted as part of the Government’s Careers Strategy and statutory guidance for schools and colleges. In addition, The Careers & Enterprise Company now supports the implementation of the benchmarks in schools and colleges with a national network of support, resources and targeted funding.

Since the initial pilot of the Gatsby benchmarks in the North East of England, we have sought to gather evidence of the effectiveness of the Benchmarks, including a four-year evaluation by the University of Derby published in 2021 which found the benchmarks had a positive impact on students’ career readiness and GCSE attainment.

These are the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks, which form the core of our Careers delivery at CHS:

Post-16 Pathway Options

When a student leaves CHS at the end of Year 11 they have a wide range of options available to them; more than ever before in fact! The best way to think about this is in ‘levels,’ as shown in the diagram above. If a student achieves a grade 1-3 at GCSE they have met ‘level 1.’ If they have achieved grade 4 or above, they have met ‘level 2.’ Students leaving CHS have level 1 and level 2 qualifications, so will be going on to study level 2 or 3 qualifications, but where can they go and what can they do? As shown above, there are several options for level 3, including A-Levels, T-Levels, college courses and apprenticeships. Competing level 3 qualifications unlocks access to level 4 and above, but there are lots of routes up the levels to choose from! The video below explains the choices in more detail:

You can also find a great guide below from Lancashire County Council (LCC) about the post-16 options and providers in our local area:

Unifrog Careers Platform

All of our students and staff have a login to the ‘Unifrog’ careers platform: https://www.unifrog.org/. The school provides access to this excellent career planning tool which allows students to research the world of work, and understand the skills they will need for their future career plans. There is a wide range of Careers information on the platform, from apprenticeships, CV building, interview skills, to job profiles and videos. The students can work through modules and save information into their personal lockers for future reference. This is also the way in which students organise their Work Experience placements (see below).

This video gives a short introduction to what our students can expect from Unifrog:

Unifrog – The universal destinations platform – YouTube

Here is a guide to using Unifrog and what it can offer, which includes how to reset your password:

Parental Conversations About Careers

An important part of Careers is positive conversations between students and their parents/carers. A great tool for this is the website ‘Talking Futures.’ It contains a lot of useful information, including videos, that can enable these conversations to take place. Click here to access the site:

Talking Futures

You can find a wide range of other website links for our local post-16 providers below, website links for advice around careers in general (including apprenticeships), as well as some great sites that help you to understand what careers are growing in our area within the Labour Market Information section.

Work Experience

In the 2024/25 academic year, our Year 10 students will be out on Work Experience Week from Monday 23rd June to Friday 27th June 2024.

Students need to organise their own Work Experience placements and are supported in doing this through our Unifrog platform, as well as lessons on organising placements, starting in November on Enrichment Day 1. The process involves:

• Students (with support from parents/carers) identify and make contact with potential employers
• Students enter the details of the employer that has agreed to take them on placement onto Unifrog
• Unifrog contact the employer to confirm that they have agreed to take the student and that the employer has relevant insurances in place
• Unifrog contacts the students’ parent/carer to share the details of the placement and confirm that they agree to allow their child on the placement
• Unifrog contacts the school to confirm the placement once all the above confirmations have been received.

Below you can find all letters sent to parents/carers, help sheets given to students, and a document that list employers who have taken CHS students on placement in the last two years.

In terms of considering a potential placement employer, please be aware that we cannot authorise a placement for a student (even if a parent/carer approves it) unless the employer meets key criteria around insurance, health and safety, risk assessment and safeguarding. This is to ensure the safety of our students. When the employer is emailed by Unifrog, these are some of key the questions related to this that they are asked:

• Is the student likely to ever be with only one adult, without another adult present?
• If yes to the above, does the person they would be alone with hold a criminal records (e.g. DBS) check?
• Is PPE or other special safety equipment required?
• Can you confirm that you have an Employers’ Liability Insurance policy which covers work placements for under-16s?
• Please provide the name of your insurance provider, the policy number and expiry date.
• Please email a copy of your organisation’s Employers’ Liability Insurance by email.
• Can you confirm that you have a Risk Assessment that is up to date and appropriate (including taking into account having a young person working at the organisation)?
• Can you confirm that you have a Health & Safety policy that is up to date and appropriate (including taking into account having a young person working at the organisation)?
• You must ensure that you follow the Safeguarding Policy which we provide.

The initial deadline for Work Experience applications is: 28^th February 2025.

Labour Market Information (LMI)

An important part of Careers planning is considering what careers are available now, and are likely to be available in the future, within our national and local area. We talk about this with out students through our assemblies and through one-to-one interviews, in lessons and in form times, but the videos below are a great starting point for considering the future of Careers in Lancashire.

We Are Lancashire – The Place for Growth

Lancashire Careers Information – Lancaster and Morecambe

Useful LMI Websites

More detailed information about national LMI can be found from the ‘Office of National Statistics,’ which is updated each month and can be found here: National LMI

More detailed information about local LMI can be found at ‘Nomis.’ Here is a link to the information for the North West: North West LMI

A great source of all kinds of LMI data (which includes a quiz to help you know which LMI might affect you) is ‘LMI for All.’ Here is a link to the website: LMI for All

Local Events and Information

Below you can find links to some of the biggest post-16 providers in our local area.

Useful Websites

Below you can find links to some useful websites providing general information around Careers guidance.