Gatsby Benchmark Four: Linking Curriculum Learning to Careers
“All teachers should link curriculum learning to careers.”
Our comprehensive careers provision is immersed within, but by no means limited to, our taught school curriculum. We all share the understanding that careers advice and guidance is the responsibility of everyone and not a few.
Subject Areas and Careers
Our subject teachers have a significant influence on our pupils’ career plans and developing their employability skills. All curriculum areas provide opportunity for our pupils to learn about the career opportunities that can follow on from their subjects, how the learning in their subject can be applied in the world of work and offer expertise in how to achieve this.
Each curriculum area:
- Delivers discrete KS3 and KS4 careers activities that focus on how our pupils can apply the knowledge they are gaining from studying their subject to a variety of workplace scenarios
- Delivers discrete KS3 and KS4 activities that focus on the correlation between the skills they use in their subject lessons and the skills that are used in the workplace, by looking in detail at 7 skills and delivering school-based and workplace-based tasks for each skill
- Plans opportunities to link curriculum content to careers
- Seeks opportunity for pupils to meet and interact with employers and employees
- Has an extensive knowledge of the career options and pathways available to our pupils
You can see more specific examples of how each curriculum area achieves this by opening their bespoke careers documents here.
Futures Days
Each year group spends one day off timetable as part of their ‘futures day’. These days are progressive and are built around the following themes:
Year 7 – Discover
Year 8 – Develop
Year 9 – Design
Year 10 – Determine
Year 11 – Devise
Enterprise
By blending enterprise with education, our curriculum enhances the skills that employers seek and allows our students to create their own definition of success. Very few of these opportunities are available within the confines of the classroom alone but through inventive projects, the seed of entrepreneurial behaviour can be sown.
Examples of Enterprise within the curriculum:
Year 7 – Chocotastic Challenge/Cadbury world trip
Year 7 – The National Enterprise Challenge
Year 8 – The Entrepreneur competition
Year 10 – Young Enterprise competition
Social Awareness and Action
Our Romero Impact Action Group led by the school youth worker Terry Mattison focuses on empowering our young people to develop and lead social action projects through a youth work curriculum. Through this action, social and life skills of those are developed as they interact with each other and society to encourage positive change for others and themselves.
A variety of projects take place either in school or in collaboration with other schools that span all year groups around themes that include climate change, working in residential and care homes, supporting local food banks, supporting refugees and supporting CAFOD.
Some of our pupils have completed a youth leadership course on Global Education and two of our pupils have recently won awards at the Lancashire Boys and Girls Clubs’ AGM for under 16 (Hallie Brady) and under 13 (Eden Turley). The million minutes project recently awarded Lois Turley for her ‘mind the gap’ work on stereotyping.
The Romero Action Group continuously seeks ways to make a difference within society and therefore we collobarate with The University of Cumbria and the Uuniversity of Central Lancashire to research the participation of young people in education in order to improve the purpose of the initiatives.
Example Social Awareness and Action Projects
- Year 11 pupils participated in a beach litter pick in conjunction with an organisation called “love my beach” at Saint Annes in March
- Our pupils run ‘Fair Trade Aware’ and bring into action a whole school week on Fair Trade.
- Our pupils run ‘Refugee Week each June. This includes curriculum lessons and assemblies. They also organise a collection of goods to give to refugee families that had just arrived into the country
- As part of the DofE award, our pupils complete either a 3 or 6 month volunteering post (once a week). Last year this accounted for over 1200 hours of volunteer service which included working in charity shops, at the park run, at brownies/rainbows etc, helping run sports clubs and environmental projects at places such as Brockholes.
- In response to the devastating Australian bush fires, two Y8 (Mark Law and Finn Hurley) led an appeal. Each member of Y8 was encouraged to bring £1 for the bush fire appeal. In addition, they also organised a sponsored walk that raised approximately £200
- During Christain Aid Week (11th -17th May), Kate and Beth Moir (Year 10 and Year 8) took part in a sponsored ‘Mega Marathon’ challenge to raise funds which would normally be acquired through the annual envelope scheme. Along with their parents, Kate and Beth aimed to complete 26.2 hours of exercise which included running, cycling, dancing, trampolining, badminton and walking. Collectively they completed 34 hours and 40 minutes of exercise and helped their local parish of Our Lady and St Edward’s to raise over £1300 for Christian Aid.
STEM Provision
We have an extensive STEM programme that includes projects, activities and challenges that engage our pupils in the world and wonder of STEM subjects, STEM careers and connect employers with pupils, bridging the gap between our learners and tomorrow’s careers.
STEM provision 2019/2020
Year 7 – STEM Club (Crest Bronze and Silver)
Year 8 – Chester Zoo STEM visit
Year 8 – Big Bang STEM fair
Year 9 – Rotary technology tournament
Year 9 – Medical Mavericks
Year 10 – Rotary technology tournament
Year 10 – Leyland trucks visit
Year 10 – Bradford media museum visit
Year 10 – GCSE Science Live
Year 10 – Milano’s textiles visit
Year 10 – UCLAN STEM
Year 10 – University of Manchester Spectroscopy
Year 10 – Angels restaurant visit
Year 10 – ‘Futurechef’ competition
Year 10 – Vivienne Westwood exhibition
