Careers Education at Mortimer

The personal development of our students is at the forefront of our Enterprise Education Programme, where we provide opportunities for students to receive a high-quality careers education. Our aim is to enable our students to understand themselves, and provide all with opportunities to inspire, raise aspirations and challenge stereotypes.

Careers education is about taking an enterprising approach to teaching and learning to ensure excellence for all of our students. Careers education at Mortimer enables students to develop confidence, self-reliance, and a determination to succeed. Enterprise encourages all young people to learn and develop in a way that meets their needs, and develops: skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work.

Mortimer’s Careers Related Learning Programme has been designed with the Gatsby Benchmarks, and the CDI (Careers Development Institute) framework, in mind.

The Careers Related Learning Programme at Mortimer aims to:

• help all students to progress to positive destinations;
• empower our young people to plan and manage their own future;
• respond to the needs of each student;
• provide inclusive CIAG and LMI (Labour Market Information) to students, staff and parents/carers;
• raise aspirations and inspire all students;
• actively promote equality of opportunity and challenge stereotypes.

The Gatsby Foundation commissioned Sir John Holman to set out what career guidance in England would be like if it were good by international standards. This resulted in the publication of the ‘Good Career Guidance Report’. The eight benchmarks set out in the report serve as a framework for improvement in careers provision and have been adopted as part of the Government's ‘Careers Strategy’ and statutory guidance for schools and colleges. At Mortimer, we have designed our Careers Related Learning programme to be mapped against these benchmarks.

These benchmarks are:

1. A stable careers programme.
2. Learning from career and labour market information.
3. Addressing the needs of each
4. Linking the curriculum learning to careers.
5. Encounters with employers and employees.
6. Experiences of the workplace.
7. Encounters with further and higher education.
8. Personal guidance.

A ‘career’ describes our journey through life, learning and work. We need to actively develop our careers in order to make the best of them. This process of career development takes skill, as well as knowledge and the right attitude. Individuals need to work on their career development skills throughout their lives.

The main purpose of the CDI’s Career Development Framework is to clarify the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that individuals need in order to have a positive career. A ‘positive career’ will mean something different to everyone, but it will typically include being happy with the way you spend your time, being able to contribute to your community and being able to have a decent standard of living.

Career development skills are the learning outcomes that career development programmes and interventions should be aiming to bring about. They need to be developed alongside academic skills and knowledge, and employability skills (the skills that you need for work and employment).

At Mortimer, our Careers Related Learning programme is delivered in the following methods to meet the needs of our students:

Our main delivery methods are:

• discrete lessons taught by a specialist team;
• series of suspended timetable events;
• part of our tutorial programme;
• modules within a carousel;
• embedded in subject-specific learning.

In 2022, over 96.7% of our school leavers progressed to full time education, employment and training. This is above the local authority average of 95.5%.