Year 12 students take up a wealth of work experience opportunities

It goes without saying that this year has presented challenges. Work experience, in its traditional form has not gone ahead. However, our Year 12 students have not been deterred by such matters and a number of them have gone out and found online work experience opportunities. Here are a few examples:

Young Professionals Programme: Joely Weston – This is one of the top programmes in the UK. For this course there were 1400 applicants for 500 places, and they had to close it after one day! Joely attended a week-long programme (all delivered online), which included presentations from leading companies such as Rolls Royce, PwC, Ernst & Young, and a keynote speaker, the Chief Nurse from the NHS.  Joely said “I’ve been really enjoying it and learning a lot. It has got me thinking about other avenues after A levels. I’m really interested in finding a degree apprenticeship in marketing or business.”

Uptree: Liam McCarthy and Joe Hughes –Liam and Joe attended an online STEM and cyber security Work Experience Day hosted by GCHQ. It involved an introduction to GCHQ and its culture, a panel talk with key business figures, speed networking with professionals, a cyber security group task and a careers and pathways talk.

GCHQ’s mission is to keep Britain safe. They bring intelligence and technology together to counter increasingly sophisticated threats. GCHQ intelligence helps keep our forces safe, prevents terrorism and crime and protects against cyber-attack.

The work experience included speed networking, a cyber security task and a pathways Talk. It was made available through UPTREE, our new work experience partner. Liam said: “I really liked it! It was very informative about the organisation and what to expect. I’m looking forward to applying later this year. I also received and invite to another webinar on 30^th July. I’m looking forward to that too!

County Records Office: Bella Hall – Bella applied for work experience at the County Records Office, and they were able to offer a project which could be undertaken online from home. This entailed looking at their website and comparing that to what is available from a selection of other Record Offices.  Bella had to come up with some recommendations for improvements for the site.

Bella said “Over the past few weeks, I have been making progress on my work experience project in between my classwork commitments. I’ve been watching the video courses and making notes for the project.  I’ll be typing up those notes in a more professional and formal response for the project soon.”

Multi-Industry Networking – Charlotte Addison, Harry Mawer, Joely Weston and Tom Watson

Tom attended an online event on 9th July where he engaged with top employers whilst gaining valuable work experience of various careers including STEM.   The employers involved included  PwC, IBM and Deloitte.

 Purple Creative Studio : Millie Brown – Millie wanted to learn about Graphic Design as a career, and Purple Creative came up with a series of activities that mirror client briefs, including a Photoshop and Logo challenge.  Millie also had to look at the competitors of the briefs listed and evaluate their current websites to see how she could make each website better with her designs.

Scarlett MacFarlane, Millie’s supervisor from Purple Creative said: “Millie’s work is fabulous.  Millie is very meticulous and has a keen eye for detail which is always a good skill to have when you wish to do design, as the simplest of details can make a real difference to the final look and feel of a design.”

Ms Mannion, Careers Leader, said: “These Year 12 students have shown a great deal of resilience and self-motivation. They have also demonstrated change management skills as they have found positive opportunities instead of set-backs.”