At The Holgate Academy we are proud to offer an excellent careers service for our students and have achieved the highly sought after ‘Quality in Careers Standard’ mark for our careers provision.  We have strong links with business and industry, giving our students an abundance of opportunities to engage with future employers and to take part in industry-sponsored activities to supplement classroom learning.

Careers lead

Our careers leader at Holgate is Mrs Sophie McKenna – email: smckenna@holgate-ac.org.uk

What we offer

The overall aim of our Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) provision is to enable all students to make and implement well informed and realistic decisions and successfully manage change and transition.

The four main themes of the CEIAG programme are:

  • planning for change;
  • decision making;
  • self development; and
  • researching options.

In addition to this, the programme aims to raise the aspirations of our students by encouraging them to take part in activities such as university visits, apprenticeship sessions and work-related learning workshops. Our link with Nottingham Trent University specifically looks at tackling educational inequalities and encouraging students to consider university as a real possibility.

Students’ needs

The CEIAG programme is designed to meet the needs of students at Holgate. It is differentiated and personalised to ensure progression through activities that are appropriate to students’ stages of career learning, planning and development.

Entitlement

Students are entitled to CEIAG that meets professional standards of practice and is person-centred and impartial. It will be integrated into students’ experience of the whole curriculum and be based on a partnership with students and their parents or carers. The programme will promote equity of opportunity and inclusion. In planning resources and external providers, we actively seek to ensure that the whole school community is represented and supported.

Student entitlement:
• students in years 7-11 will have access to a taught curriculum of careers education which meets the standards set out by the CDI careers and employability framework;
• students in year 8 will be given specific guidance in relation to making GCSE options choices;
• all year 10 and 12 students will have access to a period of work experience in a placement appropriately health and safety checked by the academy;
• all year 11 students will have access to careers guidance and support appropriate to their needs including access to impartial 1:1 guidance on request or by referral to support their post 16 transition and career decision making;
• during post 16 all students will have access to careers guidance and support appropriate to their needs;
• the academy will provide access to up to date, unbiased information via our careers and employability library;
• all students will be guided to appropriate online resources; and
• all students will have access to at least six employer/external provider meaningful interactions during the course of their time at Holgate.

Unifrog

All of our students have free access to Unifrog, an online service which enables students to easily explore their interests, then find and successfully apply for their next best step after school; such as university, further education, or going straight into a career.

It offers students the opportunity to create a bespoke pathway for themselves and gives real-time advice on available courses, careers, salaries and more.

It is the only place where students can compare every university course, apprenticeship and FE course in the UK as well as university courses in 30 other countries across the world. This is alongside getting access to labour market information and advice on careers and subjects for all routes.

Helping students to record and evidence their key activities and competencies and prepare their CVs and personal statements alongside teacher reference, CEIAG interactions recording and destination tracking tools – all in line with the Gatsby Benchmarks.

If you would like your own login for Unifrog, to explore the platform for yourself, please get in touch with our careers lead.

We’ve compiled a list of useful online resources to help you extend your research further – find them here.