Our Vision
Our goal is to consistently raise our students' aspirations and achievements while supporting their engagement with exploring and forging their future career pathways.
Our progressive careers programme intends to help equip students with the skills, knowledge and guidance needed to make informed decisions about their future paths at every educational stage. This begins in Key Stage 2, where we focus on developing links with the curriculum we deliver to various careers. We aim to foster self-awareness in students to identify strengths or development areas in their skill sets early in Key Stage 3 and their importance within employment. We guide students to explore and align their interests with our curriculum and its relevance to various career pathways to make informed decisions in preparation for Key Stage 4 and beyond. Ultimately, we aim to empower our students with the skills, knowledge, and ambition necessary to pursue and maximise their potential in their next steps, whether further education, vocational training, or employment.
We implement a progressive careers programme within our curriculum, which includes PSHE lessons, subject teaching, tutorials, enrichment activities and one-to-one interviews. Students also gain repeated exposure and experience with work-based employers and further education providers. Activities are sequenced so that at each stage of the programme, students receive appropriate information and experiences relevant to their developmental stage.
Our programme embeds all six learning outcomes described by the Career Development Institute (CDI) framework sequenced so students build on prior knowledge from each area.
Career Development Institute Learning areas:
- Growth throughout life
- Explore possibilities
- Manage career
- Create opportunities
- Balance life and work
- See the big picture
The eight Gatsby benchmarks, as outlined in the Good Careers Guidance, underpin the design of our careers programme. We aim to achieve and exceed these benchmarks to ensure our students are best prepared to leave us and embark on a fulfilling career.
The Gatsby Benchmarks:
- A stable careers programme
- Learning from career and labour market information
- Addressing the needs of each pupil
- Linking curriculum learning to careers
- Encounters with employers and employees
- Experiences of workplaces
- Encounters with further and higher education
- Personal guidance
Our Careers Leader at Great Park Academy is Anthony Veitch.
If you are an educational provider or employer interested in delivering a careers session in school, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
In the document below, we have set out which activities occur throughout the year for each year group.
This page was last updated in January 2024. It will be reviewed in September 2024.