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Careers Link Governor supports Desborough College Careers Programme Development

What challenge did the school face and how was this identified?

The school needed to redevelop their careers programme and the Governor was instrumental in the rebranding of the programme to ‘Desborough Futures’ to re-engage the pupils. The school also wanted to broaden the scope of extracurricular/added value activities to develop more life and social skills development of the boys. This was seen as a good way to integrate career learning not only in lessons but into wider activities.

What actions did you take to address this challenge?
A meeting was set up with the Careers Leader (CL), the volunteer Enterprise Adviser (EA) and the Careers and Enterprise Company Enterprise Coordinator (CEC EC) and the Careers Link Governor (who was also a parent with a boy at the school.) Through discussions and compass evaluations, the gaps in provision were identified and an action plan to meet the Gatsby Benchmarks (BM) was put in place with an initial emphasis on BM1. The CEC EC also provided BM4 training to the whole school with the theme ‘Every teacher is a Careers Teacher’.

What were the outcomes of the actions you took?
The Governor took the reworked Strategic Careers Plan to the board for the sign off and it was added to the website. By working together, the ‘Careers Team’ have been able to expand and strengthen the careers programme in the school by offering both strategic and operational support. E.g. a Year 8 activity day which includes a focus on Labour Market Information (LMI) and soft skills. With the support of the new Head Teacher the programme has now received dedicated resources for BM8 and guidance is now being offered to the boys. The SLT CL post has now been made permanent with additional time resource.

What are your next steps?
The ‘Careers Team’ are now working as part of the new Trust with another secondary school to improve the careers programme across both sites. The hope is to emulate the good practice established by the school in another school in the Trust – which also has a link governor engaged. Both schools are now supported by the same Operational Hub Lead from the CEC and development day has been diarised for sharing of best practice.

If you have any questions on how you too might drive this sort of change at your school, then please contact the Berkshire team at careersandenterprise@thamesvalleyberkshire.co.uk.