Careers at William Brookes: Nurturing Futures, Building Relationships
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Our Vision
Here at William Brookes, our school mission is to realise the amazing potential of our students through hard work, great learning and building relationships with others. We also believe in helping students to make wise choices and nurture their individual passions, as well as developing them into responsible, caring citizens who thrive and positively contribute to society.
Careers education is essential to achieving this mission and developing our students into well-rounded young people ready to go out into the world. Our vision is that careers guidance at William Brookes would achieve the following:
We aim for all students to feel inspired by the possibilities for their future studies and careers, and hear from a range of employers about their sectors and what it is like to work in them.
We aim for all students to be educated in the whole range of possibilities open to them, including information about academic, technical and apprenticeship courses.
We aim for students to feel empowered to follow their own passions and interests without being held back by barriers and stereotypes.
We aim to support students with the processes required for reaching their next steps, including deciding where to apply for their next steps.
We aim to develop our students into employable young adults, working to improve interpersonal skills, and educating them in areas such as how to conduct themselves at interview, and how to write a CV.
William Brookes School has its own dedicated Careers Advisor, Melanie Lawrence (Post grad dip QCG) Melanie is in school one day per week, (usually Mondays). Appointments are available during lesson times and there is a ‘drop-in’ facility at break time, lunchtime and after school. The careers room is based near to the school library.
Our Careers Programme
Here at William Brookes, we have a diverse and vibrant careers programme, carefully planned to give students a range of opportunities and experiences, phased to coincide with key moments in their journey through education. Although we are constantly looking to enhance and develop our careers provision, please see the details of our main careers programme here.
The 7 Gatsby benchmarks are a set of criteria adopted by the government to ensure that
schools are providing a comprehensive, inspiring and inclusive careers programme for all students.
Our careers programme is designed to fulfill all 7 of the Gatsby benchmarks. How we do this can be viewed here.
We are proud to be part of the Marches Careers Hub. The Marches Careers Hub supports
institutions within the local authority areas of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin and works to transform careers education across The Marches region by linking education with business and helping secondary schools and colleges achieve the Gatsby benchmarks of world class careers guidance.
If you would like to find out more about the work of the Marches Careers Hub, then please visit our website or contact the team at careershub@marcheslep.org.uk
Information for Employers
We have numerous opportunities for employers to get involved in our school careers programme:
• Employer presentations – assemblies or extended presentations to groups of students about the sector you work in, including how students can get into the sector, what a typical day might look like, the skills you need, the benefits of the job etc.
• Employer workshops – a chance to work with a smaller group of students to go into more depth about the sector you work in. Includes opportunities for Q & A with the students.
• Work experience placements – providing a placement to one of our students on work experience.
• Mock interviews – interview our students in a mock job interview, giving them the experience of what real interviews are actually like, including feedback on what you as an employer are looking for.
• Careers Fair – exhibit at our annual careers fair, with the opportunity to talk to our students about your work and how they can get into it.
We welcome any employers who would like to contribute to our careers programme to contact us at school using the contact details in the ‘meet the team’ section of the website.
Student, Parent/Guardian, and Staff Information
We subscribe to the Unifrog careers platform, which is a fantastic resource for researching careers and next steps in education, alongside a range of great tools such as a CV builder. All students have an account which can be accessed using their school email address. They may need to re-set their password. Unifrog can be found here.
Students, parents/guardians and staff can use the links section of our website to access more information on careers, qualifications and next steps.
Any student or parent/guardian wishing for more information, help or advice should also get in touch with us at school using the contacts in the ‘meet the team’ section.
Many of our students go on to careers in the local area, and therefore a key part of careers education involves students being aware of the local labour market. This link is a great resource for exploring further.
Work Experience
Policies
All students in Key Stage 4 complete work experience for one week at the very start of term in September of Year 11. We see this is a vital opportunity for students to gain experience of real workplaces. Current Year 10 students should now be thinking about and starting to arrange their own work experience placement: Monday 1st – Friday 6th September 2025. We launch the work experience planning process in the autumn term of Year 10. Students are given log-in details to access a database of employers in partnership with Telford and Wrekin Council’s Education Business Links Team (EBL). The below information relates to Year 10/11 work experience.
Work experience is an incredibly valuable part of our careers programme, where students are given a wonderful opportunity to gain an insight into their chosen or potential career path, and into the world of work. The programme helps students build and develop their employability skills, gain essential first-hand experience, and stand out in their applications to sixth forms, colleges, universities, and potential employers.
Students will be expected to contact and secure their own work experience opportunity. The process of students doing this in a professional and respectful manner is an important learning experience in itself. Many students will secure placements with businesses in their ‘dream’ sector. For others, they find a placement in an area that they have no intention of pursuing a career in. This is still a valid placement, as simply being in an adult workplace, away from the school institution, is a great learning experience for the students. We really appreciate your support as parents in helping students to find work placements, and helping them to make sure they consider whether they can make it to the placement under their own steam each day. Students will be supported in the process via a series of PSHE lessons where we will teach them how to contact and approach potential placements, as well as assemblies and 1:1 support from our careers team. We endeavour to get all of our students out to work experience placements but can support with placements and activities here in school as a final back-up option.
We also work alongside Telford & Wrekin Council’s Education Business Links Team (EBL),
who carry out the required health and safety checks on all placements, ensuring a safe
environment is provided to students. EBL tell us whether a placement is suitable and decide whether a student can take part in this experience. Any decision made by the EBL Team will be fully supported by the school. You as parents will also be asked to give your consent for the placement.
Once a student has found a placement which has agreed to take them on, they need to add the details of the placement to our online system, Grofar, for all the necessary checks to take place.
1. Go to https://auth.grofar.com
2. Go to log in.
3. Enter your school email and select ‘Forgot your password?’
4. Log in with the details provided to your email.
5. Click on ‘Placements’ in the left hand menu bar.
6. On the right hand side of the page, you will see a pen icon. Click on this to edit your placement.
7. Enter all the details of the placement (only starred fields are necessary) and submit.
8. The placement is sent to EBL for approval, and for you to give your consent. We will let you know of any issues.
9. We also contact the business to confirm.
10. Later in the year, students will get back in touch with the business to make final arrangements (I will write to you later in the year about this).
It is essential that all placements are arranged and confirmed by the employer no later than: Monday 28th April 2025, although we highly recommend getting everything confirmed as soon as possible in order to secure the best possible placement. Students must inform the employer of any medical conditions or any additional requirements they may need during their placement too.
The school will assess the impact of its career programme on students by analysing destinations data in line with activities that they have taken part in at school. We will also analyse evaluation and feedback from our stakeholders after providing the following feedback opportunities:
• Parents will be contacted for their evaluation of careers events at the end of each year.
• Staff will be given the chance to evaluate the careers programme each year.
• Employers and external providers/speakers will be given the chance to evaluate the programme after events they are involved with.
• Students will be given the chance to evaluate the careers programme via questionnaires starting at the end of Year 7.
More information for employers, including how to get in touch with us at school, is available in the ‘Provider Access Policy Statement’.
Useful Links
The links below contain a wealth of information and resources for teachers, students and parents:
Exploring Careers
- Uni Frog - A great platform for researching careers and pathways, writing personal statements, CVs and more. Students just need to log in using their school email. They may need to re-set their password. National Careers Service – a comprehensive careers website with job profiles, outlining: the skills required, main tasks, pay levels and career prospects for hundreds of different jobs. In addition, valuable guidance on the different stages involved in getting a job.
- Icould - Check out 1000s of career videos to help you on your careers journey. You can also self-assess your ‘personality type’ here as well.
- Parental Guidance - Information for parents and guardians to support your child’s career decisions.
- Career Alchemy - Information for parents to help your teenager explore jobs.
- Careers Box - A free careers resource showing 100s of real people doing real jobs.
- MYPATH VIDEOS | MYPATH Careers Resources - General careers videos, but especially good for Science and Maths Careers Resources in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin
- Marches Careers Hub - Longer 10 minute videos from local people covering a range of careers.
- BBC Careers - Whether you’re deciding what to study, taking your exams, planning a career or just curious, the Bitesize team can explain the world of work, with advice from people who have found the right path for them.
- UCAS – a very helpful website for students thinking of applying to higher education. Also contains valuable information on different options, including apprenticeships
- Shropshire Community-Resource - Help with solving young people’s transport issues in getting to college
- Do-It - National volunteering website.
Y9 GCSE Options choices & linking subjects to careers
Post-16 Options
- Shrewsbury Colleges Group
- North Shropshire College
- Reaseheath College
- Hereford and Ludlow Colleges
- Apprenticeships- Essential to register if looking for apprenticeships
- Shrewsbury College Apprenticeships
- Telford College Apprenticeships
- North Shropshire College Apprenticeships
- County Training
- Juniper Training
- Nova Training
- MCMT
- SBC Training
- ProVQ Apprentice – Shrewsbury
- NHS apprenticeships in Telford and Shrewsbury
- Severn Trent apprenticeships
Career specific websites
Medicine
Teaching
Armed forces
Accountancy
Animal Care
Aerospace
Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM)
Digital/web careers
Law
Creative
- Career in Music - A useful website on careers in music.
- CC Skills - Careers advice on working in the creative industries. Includes jobs/internship/work experience aboard.
- My First Job in Film
- Discover Creative - Bringing together careers information and opportunities from creative organisations in one explorable directory.
Media
Hospitality and Travel & Tourism
- Tasty Careers - Careers in the food and drink sector.
- Cilt UK - Jobs in the transport and travel industry.
- Career Scope - Careers info on jobs in hospitality, tourism and leisure.
- Cruise - Information on jobs on cruise ships.
- Careers at Sea - From ferries to container ships – careers in the Merchant Navy.
Motor Industry
Construction
Writing
Sport
Science
Other large companies
Careers Feedback
Your feedback is valuable to us. It allows us to continue to improve our career events so we can give you the best experience possible, employer, parent or student alike.
*By sending this, you confirm we have permission to contact you about the above feedback.
The informationon this page and associated links has been approved by William Brookes School and will be reviewed annually each September. Next review: September 2025
