Work Experience
As part of the Careers Education and Work-Related Learning Programme in school, we organise a period of one week’s work experience for the whole of Year 10. Students are allocated their dates for work experience during the autumn term and the work experience takes place over one of two weeks in the middle of June. Year 12 students are also given the opportunity to do work experience during the last week of the summer term.
Year 10 Work Experience - The students are given information on employer requirements and how work experience relates to the world of work. The process begins in November with all students attending an assembly. Students are given a letter for parents which explains what is going to happen. Attached to the letter is a parental consent form as parental consent must be given before any student is allowed to go on work experience. Students also receive a self-found form which they need to get completed if they wish to provide their own placement.
Please be aware that whilst we make every effort to try and get students their first or second choice of work placement, this is not always possible. Work areas such as sport, electrical, construction, motor vehicle, journalism/media, veterinary and accountancy are particularly difficult to obtain. Therefore we recommend that any students wishing to work in these areas try to obtain their own placements using the self-canvass forms. Self-found forms need to be returned by the deadline given as all placements need to be approved by the Education to Work (E2W) and this process can sometimes take up to six weeks.
Students who are unable to find their own work placement will be able to apply for a placement from the school allocation.
Year 12 Work Experience – We use the Unifrog online platform to manage the work experience programme for Year 12 students. Once students have secured a placement, they enter the employer details onto Unifrog. This will then initiate the next step in the process which is for the employer to complete their section. Parents then check the information and give their consent to the placement going ahead. Once these procedures are in place the school will check all the details provided before giving authorisation for the placement to go ahead.
We have built a good reputation with employers over the years with our students proving themselves time and time again with their excellent behaviour and attitude. Below are some of the comments from the employers:
“Jayde is a pleasant and polite young lady. The staff she has worked with this week have been full of praise. She has settled into the workplace and managed to follow tasks and her attitude and client/staff care has been excellent. A Saturday job has been offered to her.” – Ruby Hair
“Saffron was a pleasure to have with us. She was mature, polite and well-spoken and responded excellently to everyone. She showed great enthusiasm for the tasks given to her and produced some excellent work in her week with us. This included a news story for the Hull College website, managed our facebook posts and scheduled a whole day of tweets on the twitter page as well as assisting in the preparation for this week’s school taster day events. She showed a great work ethic and really got to know everyone in our team.” – Hull College
“During the week James grew in confidence at dealing with our customers. Although he required some direction, he was enthusiastic about the tasks he was given and was surprised by the level of detail needed in retail. Well done!” - Waitrose