For this year’s National Careers Week on 1-5 March 2021 the Careers Team at Stoke Damerel Community College are providing a number of activities and assemblies for Years 7 - 13 to promote and highlight the importance of careers and employability to all ages.

Each year group will be taking part in activities to explore key skills, job sectors, labour market information, Level 3 options, apprenticeships, routes into Higher Education, goals and aspirations, student life and interview tips to name but a few topics!

The Next Steps South West activities have been designed to address barriers to Higher Education progression. We are also encouraging our young people to think about developing their transferable skills and accessing Higher Education, apprenticeships, or employment opportunities. During the week, careers information will be blended within the curriculum to provide real life examples of job sectors, qualifications required and routes into employment.

This year, we have placed the focus firmly on the skills and roles that are needed to meet society’s big challenges in the years and decades ahead. Each day, we have chosen a theme to reflect the ‘Grand Challenges’ set out in the UK government’s Industrial Strategy. Every lesson during the week will feature these themes:

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

Ageing society

Clean growth

Future of mobility

There will be live Google Meet tutorials each morning and afternoon, led by Careers and Employability Manager Miss Trezona and Next Steps South West Coordinator, Mrs Gannon. The tutorials will feature specially-made videos and interactive activities. We are very grateful to our Enterprise Ambassadors, Babcock, for their help with the activities.

Miss Trezona said: “Secondary education is about preparing students for their next step in their career path. The reason we have chosen these themes as a thread is because these are the areas where many jobs are going to be linked to. It is important for our students to know which way the jobs market is going and how tech is affecting careers of the future.”

Students will also be asked to consider how they can transfer their own skills and strengths to roles they want to do. Miss Trezona explained: “Careers for today’s young people will be less linear than before. It won’t be such a case of having a job for life, with a traditional career progression. So, they need to ask who they are, what is important to them and how they want to live their lives. This will help them to build a rewarding working life.”

Mrs Gannon added: “We encourage students to use our online careers portal Unifrog which helps students to record their qualifications, create CVs or personal statements and assist them in researching apprenticeships, Higher Education courses and employment opportunities. They can also access free training, online seminars and presentations from Universities, Colleges, employers and skills providers.”

Information for parents and carers is available on our website and we encourage them to follow our careers page on Twitter- @CareersStoke - for regular updates, tips and links to useful resources and vacancies.

If you would like more information on careers and employability please contact the Careers and Employability Manager strezona@sdcc.net or the Next Steps South West Coordinator kgannon@sdcc.net

LINKS:

You can find out more about the Grand Challenges and Industrial Strategy on the government website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strategy-the-grand-challenges/industrial-strategy-the-grand-challenges

National Careers Week website: https://nationalcareersweek.com/