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Careers

Preparing students for life in modern Britain.

CEIAG (Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance) is designed to prepare students for life in modern Britain by providing the knowledge, understanding, confidence and skills that they need to make informed choices and plans for their future learning and career.

All our pupils’ career aspirations are regularly gathered, recorded and monitored to make sure they are supported in whatever way required to ensure they are equipped to achieve their best possible outcomes alongside their academic achievements.

Our school has a dedicated careers team that is available all academic year to help and support our students in this key area of personal development.

Miss Paula Gwilliam: CEIAG Careers Leader, Assistant Vice Principal paula.gwilliam@taw.org.uk 01952 386000

Mrs Bridget Hodson: Careers Education, Work Experience & Apprenticeship Coordinator

Mrs Usha Karnam: Aspire to HE, Teacher of Science

Miss Jessica France: HWMAT Aspire Mentoring Coordinator

The careers office is located on the 3^rd Floor. hadcareers@taw.org.uk 01952 386054

Careers Programme

The school follows the required statutory and best practice guidance in the referenced sections and uses compass + tracker as part of its monitor review and evaluation of its programme:

Provider Access Policy
CEIAG Policy

Our careers programme is further supported by Haberdashers’ Abraham Darby career strategy and programme.

HAD CEIAG Programme 2025 2026

Haberdashers’ Abraham Darby Academy CEIAG programme Stakeholders

Careers Guidance

Careers guidance is important to inspire our pupils towards further study enabling them to make informed decisions whenever choices are open to them. Guidance is crucial at the key transition points:

Year 9 choosing options for GCSE
Year 10/11 for post-16 choices
Year 12/13 for post-18 choices

However, all pupils can access careers guidance at any point should they require it as the school has a dedicated Level 6 qualified advisor on site.

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Careers Guidance

Our school career website supports information about the key career transition points as well as activities within the school. In addition, all Year 11 students will have a one-to-one guidance meeting for Post 16 decisions with a careers advisor from Future Focus.

Along with meeting our statutory duties, our aim within their time with us at school is to ensure that they understand enough about the world of work, to know what skills they have and need to succeed in their pathway, and to be able to negotiate and navigate a constantly moving labour market confidently. Personal guidance delivered by a professionally qualified careers adviser empowers our young people to apply their learning from the full range of career guidance activities to themselves. It enables them to assess their own strengths and prepares them for future success.

The careers adviser accomplishes this through providing unbiased information about potential next steps, interpreting and utilising up-to-date labour market information and identifying connections to the education system and the labour market that have meaning for the young person. As a school, we seek to ensure that pupils can attain the qualifications appropriate for them to progress to the next stages of their education, training or employment.

All students will have had at least one guidance meeting by Year 11 with an option for a further meeting in Sixth Form.

Our school career guidance adviser is Mrs Bridget Hodson located in the careers office on the 3^rd floor.

Our Future Focus career advisor is Mrs Suky Kaur Banford located in the careers office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

01952 386054
hadcareers@taw.org.uk

Careers Within The Curriculum

All subject teaching staff should be linking their curriculum with careers even in subjects not specifically occupationally led.

For example with STEM subjects and their relevance to the wide range of career paths along with the key expectations of employers and the importance of maths and English. Watch this short animated video for an explanation:

Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking Curriculum Learning with Careers – rationale and ideas for approaches – YouTube

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Careers Within The Curriculum

Students need to experience where their learning supports them to build career knowledge and understanding and see the relevance of your subject to their career pathway and future opportunities they would be able to access. It also supports students to understand all the pathways from each subject and highlight the essential skills they are developing. This embedded approach also supports the other aspects of CEIAG programme that includes INSIGHT personal development and individual events.

Why This Matters

Students feel more engaged in their learning when they perceive the relevance of what they are studying to their own and other people’s lives
Students become more aspirational, understanding that perceived barriers can be overcome and that there are numerous pathways to success
Subject teachers are highly influential – students are 18 times more likely to be motivated to learn if their teachers know their hopes and dreams
Staff highlighting the relevance of their subject to future careers and opportunities creates social capital for young people with more limited networks
Improving career guidance in secondary schools and colleges can lead to better student outcomes, while also raising aspirations and increasing engagement with education.

To illustrate some of the many resources available follow the links below for general and subject-specific resources:

CEC My Learning My Future: A suite of resources for Key Stage 3, 4 and Post-16

Amazing Apprenticeships: Subject resources

My Path: Short subject videos

What’s The Point: Short subject videos

Labour Market Information

Labour Market Information (LMI) is the name given to facts and figures about jobs and employment and gives an overall picture of past present and future work.

The term labour market describes the number of people working and looking for work and how many jobs there are.

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Why Is LMI Important?

LMI gives an understanding of:

Which jobs are growing or declining
What skills and qualifications are needed for a job
How much can be earned
How interests and skills can be relevant to a job
What jobs there are available locally, nationally, or on a global platform

Looking at these trends can guide you to look at careers in different ways, to ask questions and to consider aspects of a job and the industries they exist in. Although LMI can be a useful tool to help make decisions about your future, other factors need to be taken into account. It is not designed to tell you what to do and career guidance can help you with the interpretation.

Labour market information comes from a range of sources and collection of survey information and is used by government, businesses and education providers to help make future plans.

Watch the LMI information video here.

Our Local Picture
Careers in Shropshire
Careers in the Marches

LMI information for different jobs can be found on the school careers platform eCLIPS.

Our school and students have access to a local LMI platform from START created in collaboration with the Marches Careers Hub. This student-friendly local labour market information platform called START in the Marches provides meaningful and easy-to-use content about careers as well as local education and training provision. It will support you on the journey to the world of work, to make your best next step and be employment-ready.

Careerometer can be used to explore and compare key information about occupations, help you learn about different occupations and identify potential careers. It provides access to a selection of UK headline data relating to pay, weekly hours of work and future employment prospects for different occupations, as well as a description of the occupation. Simply type in the title of the job you are interested in and the widget provides a series of options from which you can select the most relevant to you. You can then look up another two occupations and compare them. You can also select ‘display the UK average’ and compare the information with the occupation you have selected.
Follow the link: Careerpilot

There is also local LMI provided by Telford and Wrekin Council here and here.

What Are Your Options?

You may already have an idea about your future studies or career. However, it’s quite common to feel undecided, or confused, about what to do next. It’s important to make sure you get the advice you need.

You can talk to your parents, teachers or a career adviser. In Year 11 you will have a planned 1:1 meeting with a careers advisor to support you with your choices, but you can access them at any time if you need to you do not have to wait.

Post-16 Options Post-18 Options

Apprenticeships And Technical Education

In today’s challenging UK employment market, young people need the right education and employability skills to progress their careers in a competitive world.

An apprenticeship is a structured first step into the workplace offering salary, qualifications and education as well as developing the crucial real-life work experience that employers seek.

Student Zone Find and Apprenticeship

Information For Parents

As a parent/carer you too have a leading and vital role in supporting your child when they are making decisions around academic subject choices and progression pathways. For this and at any other time it is important that you feel informed, confident and prepared.

eCLIPS is a career platform which can be accessed at school or home and is mobile friendly which supports comprehensive career information, descriptions of jobs, entry requirements and training options along with live-streamed labour market information. It supports students with all the information they need to make informed career decisions catering for all abilities and stages with sources for further exploration.

It helps users look for career ideas with information on broad career areas and careers linked to school subjects. There is also a wealth of advice to help young people choose study and employment options to prepare for the world of work. The password for login is within the student planner.

For additional parent-specific information follow the links below:

Talking Futures Parents toolkit
Parent – Amazing Apprenticeships
UCAS 2023 Parent Guide The Parents Guide: Free resources that can be downloaded

Parent engagement is key to supporting our school community and we welcome any support and feedback that you can offer. Please contact us to discuss any ideas that you may have.
hadcareers@taw.org.uk. 01952 386054

For Parents

Work Experience

Our work experience programme gives students the opportunity to gain an insight into their chosen or potential career path within the world of work.

It helps students build and develop their employability skills, gain essential first-hand experience, and supports their applications to Sixth Forms, colleges, universities and potential employers.

Placement dates for 2025/2026:

Year 10: Monday 1st June to Friday 5th June 2026
Year 13: Tuesday 1st September to Friday 4th September 2026

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Year 10 and Year 13 Work Experience

We work alongside Telford & Wrekin Council’s, Education Business Links Team (EBL) who ensure businesses offer valuable placements and carry out the required Health and Safety/Safeguarding checks ensuring a safe environment for our students. Any decision made by The EBL Team regarding suitability will be fully supported by the academy.

To assist students source and confirm placements, they have access to the EBL Database which contains the details of employers who have offered work experience placements in the past and are keen to help students. Full details can be found in the student guide. Please note that they prefer students to make the approach themselves rather than parents/carers/teachers where possible.

Placements do fill up very quickly as other schools and colleges in the area can also be undertaking their programme at the same time. It is therefore vital that the required consents and checks are carried out and completed as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

Students will be expected to make their own way to the placement and the cost of transport should be met by the student’s family. If there is a problem with this, then please contact us. The academy reserves the right not to place a student on work experience whose behaviour, attitude and/or attendance has been considered unsatisfactory during the year. This decision is not taken lightly, and parents will be notified before work experience if this is the case.

Supporting Resources:

Work Experience Letter
Year 10 Student Manual
Application letter template.
Thank you letter template.

In addition to our in-person work experience programme in Year 10 and Year 13, we also encourage other years to explore virtual work experience which has increased in its availability during, and post COVID-19. Virtual work experience (sometimes called online, remote, or digital work experience) gives a chance to gain experience in the workplace, develop skills, boost employability and explore new industries and job roles.

Not all virtual work experience is the same. Some are open to everyone and provide a platform for students to discover more about the job, view pre-recorded videos on what it’s like to work with the organisation, go on virtual tours and possibly take part in some live Q&A sessions. Others may require an application process and offer regular online meetings with a supervisor, individual project work, networking sessions, training opportunities and video tutorials.

Speakers4Schools connects young people to high-quality virtual work placements, and they have access to 700 top employers. You can register to stay up to date with their latest developments.

A list of free virtual work experience placements ranging from fashion, finance, healthcare, marketing, sustainability, and software to teaching can be found on SpringPod.

Barclays Life Skills is a website to help young people develop the skills they need for a better future.

If you wish to speak with Mrs Hodson to discuss this further; please contact bridget.hodson@taw.org.uk or 01952 386054 to arrange an appointment.

Aspire To Higher Education

Aspire to HE is a national, government-funded programme to improve progression to higher education (HE).

It includes targeted outreach from the University of Wolverhampton and attainment-raising sessions.

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Gatsby Benchmarks

The Gatsby Foundation, in collaboration with The Careers & Enterprise Company and Disability Rights UK, have created a new publication which aims to inspire career leaders, teachers and all those working with young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

The Gatsby Benchmarks create a strong career guidance programme for each and every young person.

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What Are The Gatsby Benchmarks?

The eight Gatsby Benchmarks are a framework for good career guidance developed to support secondary schools and colleges in providing students with the best possible career education, information, advice and guidance.

The 8 benchmarks:

Benchmark 1: Create and sustain a stable careers programme that is known and understood by pupils, parents, teachers, governors and employers.
Benchmark 2: Learn from career and labour market information to ensure that every pupil, and their parents have access to good quality information about future study options and labour market opportunities.
Benchmark 3: Address the needs of each pupil at different stages. Opportunities for advice and support will be tailored to the needs of each pupil.
Benchmark 4: Link curriculum learning to careers and support STEM subject teachers to highlight the relevance of STEM subjects for a wide range of future career paths.
Benchmark 5: Ensure every pupil has multiple opportunities to learn from employers about work, employment and the skills that are valued in the workplace.
Benchmark 6: Ensure every pupil has first-hand experiences of the workplace to help their exploration of career opportunities and expand their networks.
Benchmark 7: Ensure every pupil understands the full range of learning opportunities that are available to them, including both academic and vocational routes.
Benchmark 8: Ensure every pupil has the opportunity for guidance interviews with a career adviser, which should be timed to meet their individual needs.

For more information about The Gatsby Benchmark follow the link below.
Implementing the Gatsby Benchmarks

In order to evaluate our careers programme we use a tool called Compass, which helps us to evaluate our careers activity against the eight Gatsby Benchmarks.

Compass was built in partnership with the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, to help schools easily discover strengths and find areas for improvement.

For more information about Compass follow the link below.
Info | Compass

Employability Skills

Employability Skills can be defined as the transferable skills needed by an individual to make them ‘employable’.

Along with good technical understanding and subject knowledge, employers often outline a set of ‘soft skills’ that they want from an employee.

These are general skills/abilities, that can be applied to almost any working environment.

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Employability Skills

Whilst qualifications open the door to an interview, it is the ‘soft skills’ that often land a person the job and, more importantly, allow them to keep it. A recent CBI survey of the 500 largest companies within the United Kingdom, highlighted just how important these skills (labelled as ‘aptitude for work’) are to companies:

Most employers now use an in-depth interview process that allows them to identify and select the candidates with the strongest employability skill sets. It is therefore vitally important that these skills are not ignored or left to chance, as a young person develops. These skills have always been critical to careers success but their relevance in the world of work is ever evolving, and soft skill intensive occupations are expected to account for two thirds of jobs by 2030.

The 7 essential soft skills currently in demand are

Teamwork
Problem solving
Communication
Adaptability
Critical Thinking
Time management
Interpersonal

Other Useful soft skills include

Conflict management
Reliability
Leadership

Here at Haberdashers’ Abraham Darby, we are extremely keen to promote the development of employability skills as well as academic skills. To facilitate the development of these skills we have a number of initiatives and procedures in place:

Personal development programme
Teaching within subject lessons
Shared projects with local companies that challenge students to develop these skills within real world working contexts in addition to our work experience programme
Extra-Curricular programme

There are useful online resources that students can use outside of school

Barclays Life Skills website which provides a range of interactive resources for students to both evaluate and develop their employability skill sets

LifeSkills | Developing work and life skills (barclayslifeskills.com)

The National Career Service Discover your skills assessment

Skills assessment | National Careers Service

Employer Information

At Haberdashers’ Abraham Darby we aim to develop our students to be confident, calm, hardworking, and employable people who contribute to their community.

Our school currently enjoys wide and varied relationships with local and national employers and providers. We are still keen to develop more as we recognise the key impact this can have on our students’ future within an ever-changing labour market.

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Employer Information

We welcome you to contact us to discuss any ideas or requirements to engage with our students that you may have but below are some of the areas that companies have helped us with previously

Career Talks: An effective and direct method to inform students about career paths and opportunities
Work Experience: Our students have two opportunities to take part in work experience, in Year 10 and then again in Sixth Form. Offering a placement during these times helps our students develop a realistic understanding of the world of work and employability skills. We also seek extended workplaces to work alongside academic subjects for some of our students.
Mock interviews: This enables our students to hone their interview skills to support future job apprenticeships or university processes.
Career Fairs: Representation at these events helps our students with the understanding of employment available.
Company Recruitment: If you are looking to recruit for your business for example through apprenticeships then we could support you by advertising your recruitment events and vacancies directly to our students. If suitable and appropriate we could also support with onsite interviews with prospective applicants from our school.
Delivery of Curriculum: Working with our teaching staff to deliver aspects of the curriculum in class gives a realistic and relevant understanding of why the students are learning in a subject area.

If any of this is of interest to you can you please contact the careers team in the first instance:
hadcareers@taw.org.uk 01952 386054

Destinations Data

This is used to measure the impact of careers guidance for our students and to help us improve outcomes for our young people. Information from it also informs the development of our CEIAG programme. It is used to track trends over time to ensure the appropriate and up-to-date guidance is given to our students from years 7 to 13.

RPA Activity Survey for Haberdashers Abraham Darby
Year 11 Destinations

Year 11 Cohort Year	2023/2024	2022/2023	2021/2022	2020/2021	2019/2020	2018/2019
Activity Survey	2024 (Nov 24)	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Full Time Education	89.50%	84.9%	93.9%	91.1%	91.7%	86.8%
Apprenticeships	3.50%	5.6%	2.8%	2.2%	0	1.9%
Employment with Training	2.90%	1.1%	0	0.6%	0.6%	0
Re Employment	0.60	0	0	0	0	0
Settled Outcome	96.50	91.6%	91.6%	93.9%	92.4%	88.7%
NEET Actively Seeking	1.70	5.6%	1.1%	1.7%	4.5%	1.3%
NEET Not Active	1.70%	2.2%	1.7%	2.2%	1.3%	1.9%
Moved Area	0	0.6%	0	0	0.6%	0
Situation Unknown	0	0	0	2.2%	1.3%	8.2%
Total %	100	100	100	100	100	100
Cohort Number	172	179	179	179	157	159

Location of Post 16 pathways Year 11
2024/2025

PROVIDER

HABERDASHERS ABRAHAM DARBY

MADELEY ACADEMY

THOMAS TELFORD

SHREWSBURY COLLEGE

TELFORD COLLEGE

JUNIPER

LANDAU

NOVA

APPRENTICESHIP

MILITARY

CROSSBAR

ACCESS SPORT

STOURPORT

Year 13 Destinations

YEAR 13 2024/2025 LOCATION OF POST 18 PATHWAYS	%
UNIVERSITY	52.7
GAP YEAR	3.6
GAP YEAR /APPLY UNIVERSITY	5.5
GAP YEAR/APPLY APPRENTICESHIP	1.8
GAP YEAR/DEFERRED UNIVERSITY	3.6
HABERDASHERS' ABRAHAM DARBY	3.6
COLLEGE	3.6
EMPLOYED	10.9
EMPLOYED/APPRENTICESHIP	5.5
DEGREE APPRENTICESHIP	3.6
APPRENTICESHIP	3.6
UNKNOWN	1.8
COHORT TOTAL	100

YEAR 13 2024/2025 UNIVERSITY LOCATION	QUALIFICATION
ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY	CRIMINAL LAW, ENGINEERING WITH PHYSICS
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY	HISTORY
DEMONTFORD UNIVERSITY	BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, EDUCATION STUDIES, MIDWIFERY , PHARMACY AND COSMETIC SCIENCE, LAW
HARTPURY	SPORT
MANCHESTER MET UNIVERSITY	LAW
NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY	PSYCHOLOGY , HISTORY, JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF DERBY	PHYSIOTHEREAPY, NURSING (CHILD) & LEADERSHIP
UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE	FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF LAW	LAW
UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER	AEROSPACE, PSYCHOLOGY, HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER	LAW
UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM	ARCHETECTURAL ENVIRONMENT ENGINEERING
UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON	BUSINESS& MARKETING, PHARMACY, HISTORY, PARAMEDIC SCIENCE, PRIMARY EDUCATION
MANCHESTER/ MANCHESTER MET UNIVERSITY	DEGREE APPRENTICESHIP IN TAXATION WITH EY
TELFORD/SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY	DEGREE APPRENTICESHIP CHARTERED BUSINESS MANAGEMENT WITH CAPGEMINI

Information For Teachers

CEIAG (Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance) within the school involves a whole school approach that all staff contribute to in order to support our students to explore and plan for their future based on their individual skills interests and values.

This allows the links between academic and career experiences to be formed enabling and improving our students’ career preparation and management.

There are statutory and school policies that you need to have an understanding of and links to support this are below:

Bakers Clause
Provider Access Legislation
Careers Guidance and Access
Provider Access Policy
Careers Education Information Advice and Guidance Policy

It is key that you understand that teaching and support staff are highly influential in this area and students are more likely to be motivated to learn if their hopes dreams and aspirations are known. You can be the one that creates the social capital for those with limited networks to understand all their pathways.

In January 2023, the updated provider access legislation (PAL) was enacted. It presents a timely and important opportunity to build on the growing interest in high-quality technical pathways.

Policies & Key Documents

Year 9 Options

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Admissions

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