HORIZONS

Whilst our Horizons department has not been able to continue as it usually would during the last year, we have still been able to work with all of our pupils to prepare them well for their lives beyond school.

Our careers programme starts at Form 1 and goes right through to the Upper Sixth, guiding our pupils through important decisions for their future. We also work with Futuresmart, who provide independent professional advice through an expert careers service. All pupils in Form 5 and Lower Sixth have had the opportunity to have a one to one guidance meeting with the Futuresmart team and I know these are invaluable. We also provided interview practice for our aspiring medics, vets and indeed anyone else who requested it. Pupils have access to unifrog which we have used mainly with the Sixth Form so far but plan to use more extensively throughout the school next year. It is a wonderful resource and particularly helpful for university applications.

In the Lent term, we held a series of team building workshops for our Senior School pupils with Futuresmart. These included ‘The Apprentice meets Dragon’s Den’, where Form 5 pupils had to create innovative business ideas (a drone delivery service and sleep pods for exhausted NHS staff were just some of the ideas) and pitch them to other teams for investment; decision making strategies; discovering the skills needed for different careers and personality types.

For our Sixth Formers, we have a programme dedicated to university applications, which includes advice on writing personal statements, choosing courses and universities, roadshow visits from international universities and talks from outside specialist speakers. We have talks on diverse topics such as finance, resilience and study skills (although these have been limited this year) and each pupil has individual guidance with their application, particularly their personal statement, from their tutor and from myself. There is also advice on apprenticeships, job opportunities and gap years for those who do not want to apply to university. In 2021 our Sixth Form leavers’ destinations were wideranging and aspirational. We now have students from last year studying subjects as diverse as Physics with Nuclear Astrophysics, English, Acoustical Engineering, Medicine, Ancient History, Psychology, Marketing and Comparative Literature to name but a few. Students are at universities all over the UK from Southampton to Aberdeen, from Queen’s, Belfast to Bristol, from Cardiff to Exeter. Some of our pupils chose not to continue their studies but have pursued other careers. They were a fantastic year group and we are very proud of them and wish them every success in the future. We hope some of them will return one day to advise current pupils about possible careers. I am particularly proud that all of our pupils who went on to Higher Education gained a place at the university of their choice.

Mrs Aliberti Head of Horizons