Careers Advice & Guidance

Careers Education, Information, Advice & Guidance (CEIAG)

At Willingdon we value how important Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance is for our young people, in both raising aspirations and guiding and preparing them for the next steps in their career pathways.

The Careers Education and Guidance programme at Willingdon is designed to help students make the most of themselves and their opportunities. 

Willingdon Community School are delighted to announce their commitment to working towards re-accreditation of the prestigious Quality in Careers Standard for its Careers Education Information, Advice and Guidance programme. The school achieved the Quality in Careers Standard, a nationally recognised award and one of the highest accolades a school can receive for excellence in this area, in 2017. The school is again demonstrating its commitment to providing outstanding impartial, independent careers education, information, advice and guidance for all young people by working towards re-accreditation for 2021/2022.

In addition, we are achieving 100% in all 8 of the Gatsby benchmarks – again illustrating our high standards within CEIAG provision. 

The Gatsby Benchmarks are:

1. A stable careers programme

2. Learning from career and labour market information

3. Addressing the needs of each pupil

4. Linking in curriculum learning to careers

5. Encounters with employers and employees

6. Experiences of workplaces

7. Encounters with further and higher education

8. Personal guidance  

In addition to this, our CEIAG provision is supported by a host of other careers related events that our young people receive throughout the year. Examples of these include: Careers fairs, mock interviews, focused assemblies and taster days to local colleges and universities.

Work Experience takes place in May, and involves every year 10 student completing a week with an external employer. This is an invaluable opportunity for our students to fully experience the work place, and the world of work, and also learn those very important employability skills that all employers are looking for.

Our Careers Team

For more information on CEIAG at Willingdon, please contact a member of our Careers Team:

Careers Lead
Alison Borrell - Tel: 01323 485254 or Email: aborrell@willingdonschool.org.uk

Careers Adviser
Sarah Rooney - Tel: 01323 485254 ext 281 or Email: srooney@willingdonschool.org.uk

Careers Governor
David Wakefield - Email: david@onthesly.com

Careers address from Mrs May

Useful Information

National Careers Service

National Apprenticeship Service

Supporting Willingdon Community School

Would you like to help us?

If you would like an informal chat about how you could support our careers programme in school then please email aborrell@willingdonschool.org.uk or srooney@willingdonschool.org.uk . You could share our careers events on your social media, you could join our alumni network of past students, you could come in (subject to COVID restrictions) or join us on MEET/ZOOM and give a talk about your career and life journey so far, you could help us out with an event. Whatever it might be, we would love to hear from you.

Sonia Silve from the  Specialist Family Services came in to help with the Year 11 mock interview event and said ;-  

‘Thanks for the opportunity to interview the young people at Willingdon again this year. I thoroughly enjoy it and I am always impressed by the students. ‘

Mrs Wakefield an Audiologist and parent commented

‘ I was really impressed by the standard of answers all the students provided, I am certain I was not anywhere near as confident or self-assured at their age.  The school is clearly doing an excellent job of developing such confident, articulate and ambitious young people so please pass on my congratulations to the staff and the students.’   

Labour Market Information

Explore other websites that present information on the UK labour market

icould.com is a careers website which uses LMI for All to provide context alongside careers videos.

SACU is an online source of careers information for young people, parents, teachers and careers advisers.

Post-16 information

The Careers East Sussex website, provides information both for young people, and for their parents and carers, including journey to adulthood information for young people with additional needs. It includes the Employability Passport tool which enables students to record their skills and careers experiences, and which is freely accessible to all students with an e-prospectus log-in. Learners can use their Passport information in applications, share it with tutors for feedback or print it off as an interview prompt. Information on how to use the Passport can be found here. If you would like to use this facility, and have not yet received an e-prospectus login, please contact Mrs Rooney.

For all learners, we would recommend having a one-to-one session with a careers guidance professional in school if they have not already done so. Speak to Sarah Rooney to set this up.. Alternatively, Get Career Confident also offer free online guidance sessions and the National Careers Service is available online or by phone 0800 100 900.

Presentations

Points of Contact 

Student/Parents/Carers should primarily contact the enrolment team using the contact details below:

Apprenticeships

Careers Feedback

We are always looking to improve our Careers provision and welcome your feedback regarding the Careers section of our website.

Give us your feedback