Year 10 students at Stephen Longfellow Academy were given the opportunity to access an internal work experience offer. The main aim of the internal work experience programme was to provide students with an insight into these job sectors and offer them an experience of the workplace.
Students were given a choice of seven different job sectors to choose from across the academy. The sectors included: Sport, Horticulture, Construction, Business and Admin, Catering, Childcare and Beauty. Students were given the chance to undertake a range of activities and shadow members of staff and work with external employers on this day in each of the job sectors.
For the Childcare experience, students worked in the school’s Primary area, supporting younger children at breaks and lunches. In the classroom they shadowed teachers and set up basic activities for younger children and shadowed teachers.
For the Catering experience, students worked in the kitchen under the supervision of staff, preparing different foods for the day.
For the Construction experience, students shadowed the site team and undertook tasks such as replacing locks on doors.
Within the Horticulture area, students worked with a member of staff to manage the garden area and bed in new plants. Within Sport, students worked alongside PE staff to set up activities and lessons.
For the Beauty experience, The Stephen Longfellow Academy worked in partnership with the Beautylicious Academy who delivered a practical engaging Beauty workshop to students on nail acrylics. Several students from Key stage 3 also participated in this
Construction and Childcare proved the most popular take up, followed closely by Beauty, Catering, Horticulture and Sport.
Feedback taken from students was positive, comments included:
“Educated me about gardening jobs” DH (Horticulture experience)
“Got to experience what it’s like to work.” LW (Childcare experience)
“I enjoy food tech in school, so it was good.” AP (Catering)
“It’s what I want to do when I leave school.” KI (Childcare experience)
“Helped me understand what the site team actually do” LL (Construction)
“When are we doing this again?” AP (Beauty)
Every student will be provided a certificate to acknowledge their engagement in the work experience. Members of staff who lead an experience will provide a written reference for the student which will be added to students’ record of achievement. The Careers department will support all students to add the recent work experience to student CVs in Year 11.
Overall, the work experience offer was a very positive programme for students. All the students who engaged demonstrated exemplary behaviour, which was mentioned in all staff feedback. Students clearly benefited from the experience, gaining a new experience, and built confidence for the future. Several students fed back that they would like a longer duration of experience, which we will take on board for the next academic year and aim to increase the offer with more internal placements and some offsite.