Work Experience

We feel that students gaining experiences of work throughout their school life is important for giving them an understanding of a professional environment and understanding more about different jobs.

Year 9s (14 year olds) – they complete a 2 day work shadowing placement in April. This is for them to understand what a professional environment is like and to observe work in action.

Year 10s (15 year olds)- they complete a 1 week work experience placement in July. This is to give them an experience of work, where they will complete tasks as instructed by the employer.

Year 11-13 (16-18 year olds) – we are always looking for extra opportunities for this year group to experience a particular area of work they are passionate about finding out more about and how it relates to their university subject.

Careers Week

This year, we hosted our first ever Careers Week, with the following activities:

Primary School- our Sixth Formers and employers came to speak to students each morning about their career and university plans.

Middle School (11-14 years old)- had a range of careers talks where they had the opportunity to ask employers questions.

Upper School (14-16 year olds)- attended a speed networking event where they were able to speak with a number of employers.

Sixth Form (16-18 year olds)- attended a Careers Fair

We are keen to continue with a Careers Week for next year, and are looking to expand it to include workshops or specific events run by particular employers as well as the current event offer.

Employer engagement

We are always interested in working with a range of employers to give our students the best possible experiences. Examples of work we have done this year with employers:

Bain & Co. worked with our year 8 and 9 students on a Dragon’s Den project for a morning in December.

BP hosted our Year 12s to visit their Head Office for a Networking event and activities on the topic of the future of transport.

McKinsey & Co. hosted some Year 10 and 12 students for a lecture at their offices on the impact of automation.

Our Sixth form Politics students visited the Houses of Parliament to see politics in action.

Deloitte hosted students for a day of employability activities.

Paddington Central hosted a CV workshop for students applying for apprenticeships.

We are always open to working with new employers to develop new opportunities for our students.

My Journey: Careers Talks

Our students love nothing more than hearing about a person’s job and how they came to be in that job.

They enjoy hearing about:

  • How they came to make subject choices at A level and University.
  • Their route after school (University or Apprenticeship)
  • How they decided on their current career
  • Advice they would give to students looking to work in that sector

Our students have been fortunate to hear from a range of professions this year including employees working in technology, engineering, construction, law and consulting.

We are always looking for more employers interested in speaking to students. This can be to a class group (20-30 students), a year group (60 students) or multiple year groups (120 students).

Business and Enterprise

We have many students studying Business at GCSE and Level 3 BTEC (equivalent to A levels). As part of these courses, they need to engage with different employers.

This can be through:

  • Enterprise competitions
  • Our year 10 students won a recent LBS Enterprise competition, and in Year 12 we had 2 Young Enterprise Teams, who created their own businesses.
  • Employer visits
  • Students have visited a number of employers to understand more about different roles within the business sector.
  • Projects

As part of the BTEC course in Sixth Form, students complete coursework, which can be based on real life business problems. This year, for example, students completed a marketing project, based on a building being built by Galliford Try.

King Solomon Academy uses the Gatsby Benchmarks as a guide to plan our Careers programme. As part of our commitment to informing our students of the full range of learning and training pathways on offer to them, we are happy to consider requests from training, apprenticeship and vocational education providers to speak to students.

In the first instance, requests by providers to visit the school to take part in any of the above activities should be sent to the Academy’s Careers Coordinator, Camilla Al-Hariri (c.al-hariri@kingsolomonacademy.org) with a minimum of 6 weeks’ lead time. All requests will be considered on the basis of; staffing availability to support the activity, clashes with other planned activity, trips or visits to the Academy, interruption to preparation for examinations or rooming and space availability to host the activity.