Students at Walton Academy have a planned programme of Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG), in accordance with the DFE careers guidance and inspiration in schools guidelines. The programme ensures all students have opportunities to recognise their own strengths and values and take responsibility for developing employability skills.
Talking to your child about their career aspirations, understanding plans is an important step in helping them to establish a pathway which suits them. Sitting down for a simple question and answer session with your child can be a great way to do this, and revisiting their answers occasionally can help them to continue to shape their plans to suit their needs.
All related policies, including our Careers education, information, advice and guidance policy and our provider access policy can be found here.
All year 7 students will receive:
All year 8 students will receive:
All year 9 students will receive:
All year 10 students will receive:
All year 11 students will receive:
All post 16 students will receive:
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.
The Gatsby Benchmarks consist of eight guidelines that identify excellent careers guidance and which the government expects schools to work towards meeting. By doing so, schools can look to measure and improve their careers guidance. The benchmarks provide a very helpful framework for developing our careers programme at Walton Academy.
In summary, the benchmarks are as follows:
1. a stable careers programme
2. learning from career and labour market information
3. addressing the needs of each student
4. linking curriculum learning to careers
5. encounters with employers and employees
6. experiences of workplaces
7. encounters with further and higher education
8. personal guidance
We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of our careers programme on a regular basis. One of the key methods that we use is the Compass+ programme developed by the Careers and Enterprise Company. The evaluation requires us to reflect on our practice using the Gatsby benchmarks.
National Careers Service – Information, advice and guidance to help you make decisions on learning, training and work. You can speak to or email a National Careers advisor.
Careerpilot – Expert careers information and tools for 11-19 year olds, all in one place.
National Apprenticeship Service – Governement service to search for apprenticeships.
Informed Choices – A service to help you understand which subjects open up different degrees, particularly at Russell Group universities.
The Scholarship Hub – Search and apply for University scholarships, bursaries and grants.
The UCAS website has everything a student or parent needs to know about researching different universities and applying for places.
