Children talk about different jobs and occupations through play and their first experiences of communication as a toddler. Often, we hear about a person being inspired at a young age, we need to encourage this energy and those ideas. Learning about careers is about more than simply writing a CV or how to look for a job, it is about communicating like professionals and creating a high expectation of ourselves.

“There is a gap in quality in careers support for young people – a gap that will widen if we do not take practical action to close it.” (Dr Deirdre Hughes OBE, March 10, 2022)

At Key Stage 3, careers research should be about elimination of ideas more so than it is about identifying them to choose a suited path. We all try to follow a direction, but we should be reminding students that these can be diverted or changed along the way. From experience, working with secondary school and further education students who are at critical points of making decisions about career progression, I’ve witnessed how the process can be incredibly daunting and one they don’t always feel comfortable with or ready to approach. However, being educated about careers needs to start with understanding oneself and recognising your own strengths and weaknesses. Once a person is confident in knowing their own personality and understands what they are good at, they are in a much better place to discover and explore different career opportunities. Thus, learning these concepts at a younger age, prepares them for decision making at important transition points.

Not only is a careers education about discovering oneself, but it is also about perseverance, target setting and being excited about the future. Throughout the many roles that I’ve held in an educational environment, I have seen first-hand that a student developing aspirational ideas often leads to increased opportunities for positive outcomes. Utilising the Bedrock Careers Curriculum means that the school is adhering to and following the Gatsby Benchmarks which is part of the Government’s Careers Strategy, to embed world-class career guidance provision, and is issued as statutory guidance for all schools and further education colleges to adhere to.

The Bedrock Careers Curriculum enables the teacher to direct the lesson how they choose through:

• Using reliable, trustworthy, and relevant material readily prepared and instantly incorporated into the lesson.
• Learning is easily tracked and monitored. Lesson objectives focus on developing knowledge with key vocabulary that is directly linked to the topic area and is extended to applying and evaluating the key vocabulary through scenarios, quizzes and completing discovery led learning tasks.
• Lending itself to further enriched activities such as the Y9 Entrepreneur topic that develops the use of keywords, and leads on to creating their own business idea, which could promote Enterprise activities amongst the school or local community. Within the Y10 topics, Exploring Possibilities and Work Experience, can prove useful for creating Work Experience profiles/letters and gathering information when resourcing links to industry professionals and practice.

The Bedrock Careers Curriculum encompasses the foundations needed for students to feel increasingly confident when presented with challenges. The core construct of this curriculum comes from a well thought out program to interlink with key milestones throughout a student’s journey in Secondary Education, from ‘Who am I?’ in Y7, starting in a new school environment working towards ‘Making the right choice’ in Y11, when deciding what to apply for beyond Level 2. Other topic areas range from building a positive Self-image to understanding what a contract is.

It is an exciting curriculum that invites change and adaptation for individuals or groups of learners depending on level and demand. There is content that allows the student to make associations and links to personal experiences and their performance within other subjects that they study. Whilst teaching career focused tier 3 vocabulary that will prove invaluable for learners’ future communications within a professional and career focused environment. Learning, understanding, and applying the career focused vocabulary is practised through preparing professional documents and using business-related terminology in different settings. Encouraging positive and formal communication with others whilst recognising the importance of responsibility and accountability.

Within Key Stage 4, students are pressed to think about their future. Using the Bedrock Careers Curriculum allows them to learn new terminology that regularly presents itself in materials related to apprenticeships, employment, starting a business, university, post 16 courses etc. Increasing their career vocabulary enables students to feel more confident when researching and reading about the next steps in their educational or career journey.

The Bedrock Careers Curriculum is inclusive, engaging, and relevant to all students who will begin to value their individual profile and work through scaffolding their professional vocabulary. It is as much about the presentation of themselves around others as it is to focus and work on who they are and their own career path.

“The importance of Careers Education for young people is about understanding opportunity and to focus on the development of oneself, both who they are and how to be professional.” - Rebecca Blunsden-Ford

At the forefront of my purpose, I want to support young people and educational staff in practising and guiding positive experiences. I began as a Physical Education teacher in a Secondary School where I soon sought an opportunity as a Head of Sixth Form, a challenge but one I wished to continue in my next role. Moving from Secondary School to Further Education was quite a shift and one that was welcomed to further practice supporting and assisting students in their next steps. Creating and leading a PSHE/Careers curriculum to students 16 and over was ever changing. Each group, each week, each year I would change resources, content, and delivery in response to feedback from staff and students. In this role alone, I was a part of guiding and teaching over 3000 students in the next steps of their career.

More recently, I’ve been working with and supporting students all over the world with university applications and career prospects using the directive of my own collection of experience through my company called Unigeek. I continue to support young people with honest, comparative, and considered advice on what to do next in their path to independence and employment. Alongside this, I continue to use my strong links within educational practice as a part time Physical Education, ICT and Design Technology Teacher at Wymondham High Academy to stay up to date with all current teaching trends.