FUTURE TALENTED Spring Term 2019 - Issue 2 | Page 14

RIFFAT WALL
PRINCIPAL, URMSTON GRAMMAR
SCHOOL, MANCHESTER
very young person
needs high-qualit y
careers guidance to be
able to make informed
decisions about their future. As school leaders, we know that relevant
information is critical if young people are to raise their aspirations and
capitalise on opportunity.
The development of the Gatsby Benchmarks means that every
school now has a much clearer vision of what makes a world-class
careers programme.
At Urmston Grammar, we have recently been awarded the Quality
in Careers Standard. While at the time of assessment it wasn’t
completely aligned with the Gatsby Benchmarks, it did strongly
correlate with them. We felt it was important that we had a nationally
recognised award, as it gives staff and parents confidence in the quality
of our provision.
We are using Compass as a self-assessment tool to evaluate our
careers curriculum against the eight benchmarks. One of the
advantages is that it produces a confidential report that allows us to
identify our strengths as well as areas for development. It also signposts
resources to help us achieve each of the benchmarks; we feel this will
drive an increase in performance rather than simply measuring it.
However, we do have some concerns that some of the questions
are open to interpretation. For example, if one school offers each
Year 11 student a 10-minute guidance interview while another is offering
a more in-depth half-hour session, is it right that both schools will
achieve the same benchmark?
Benchmark 6 (experiences of the workplace) presents an interesting
challenge as it expects students to have had a meaningful experience
of a workplace by the end of Year 11. We made the decision five years
ago to move work experience to Year 12 to improve the quality of the
placements. Does this mean that we were wrong or is the benchmark
too narrow in its criteria?
Overall, we have found the benchmarks and the Compass toolkit
incredibly useful, enabling us to highlight what we need to achieve
to provide excellent careers provision for our students.
E
“Every school now has a
much clearer vision of
what makes a world-class
careers programme”
14 // EMPLOYABILITY