Queen Elizabeth’s Academy offers students a comprehensive programme of activities geared around taking the transition into further education and training, apprenticeships and employment.
These activities are designed to inform, inspire and motivate each individual, prepare them for work and understand where different education and training courses could take them in the future. We are supported in our careers programme by members of the local business community.
Talking to your child about their career aspirations, understanding and plans is an important step in helping them to establish a pathway which suits them. Sitting down for a simple question and answer session with your child can be a great way to do this. Revisiting their answers occasionally can help them to continue to shape their plans to suit their needs.
For more information about the careers support and opportunities offered at Queen Elizabeth’s Academy, please contact Miss Jones at careers@queenelizabeths-ac.org.uk
Phone: 01623 623559
All related policies, including our careers provision, can be found here.
There are lots of ways that local employers can engage with our students, from virtual projects, work experience placements, supporting with developing student’s interview skills to being part of our annual careers fair.
If you are a local business that would like to work with our careers team in any way, please get in touch via the contact info at the top of the page.
The academy offers work experience to all year 10 students. Due to the pandemic, we have been unable to offer traditional work placements, however we are hoping to re-instate these for this academic year as the restrictions are eased.
If you are part of a local business that would like to support our work experience programme, please get in touch via the above contact info.
At Queen Elizabeth’s Academy we champion life-long learning for all staff. The Unifrog provision is available to all staff should they want to find out more about their subject specific careers in order to better support their students or should they be considering the next steps within their career journey.
Our provision is focused to offer career activities tailored to the individual needs of our students. Our careers hub, launched in 2021 is a place where students can seek further inspiration and guidance from our careers team or complete further independent research using Unifrog.
All year 7 students will receive
• Access to impartial advice
• A structured Unifrog programme delivered through tutor sessions
• Access to the annual careers fair
All year 8 students will receive
All year 9 students will receive
All year 10 students will receive
All year 11 students will receive
All of our students have free access to Unifrog, an online service which enables students to easily explore their interests via a structured Unifrog programme delivered through tutors It offers students the opportunity to create a bespoke pathway for themselves and gives real-time advice on available courses, careers, salaries and more.
It is the only place where students can compare every university course, apprenticeship and FE course in the UK as well as university courses in 30 other countries across the world. This is alongside getting access to labour market information and advice on careers and subjects for all routes.
Unifrog can be accessed via the internet allowing students to share their careers journey with their parents. If you would like your own login for Unifrog, to explore the platform for yourself, please get in touch with our careers lead.
The Gatsby Benchmarks consist of eight guidelines that identify excellent careers guidance and which the government expects schools to work towards meeting. By doing so, schools can look to measure and improve their careers guidance. The benchmarks provide a very helpful framework for developing our careers programme at Queen Elizabeth’s Academy.
In summary, the benchmarks are as follows:
1. a stable careers programme
2. learning from career and labour market information
3. addressing the needs of each student
4. linking curriculum learning to careers
5. encounters with employers and employees
6. experiences of workplaces
7. encounters with further and higher education
8. personal guidance
We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of our careers programme on a regular basis. One of the key methods that we use is the Compass programme developed by the Careers and Enterprise Company. The evaluation requires us to reflect on our practice using the Gatsby benchmarks.
There is a lot of careers information out there, and it can be hard to know what to focus on. We’ve pulled together some of the best resources to help support you going forward in your career choices.
icould.com – Free and simple to use, icould.com features over 1000 videos of people talking about their careers – explaining their job role, career path, and how different factors have shaped their direction.
National Careers Service – Information, advice and guidance to help you make decisions on learning, training and work.
Careerpilot – Expert careers information and tools for 11-19 year olds, all in one place.
National Apprenticeship Service – Government service to search for apprenticeships.
Informed Choices – A service to help you understand which subjects open up different degrees, particularly at Russell Group universities.
The Scholarship Hub – Search and apply for University scholarships, bursaries and grants.
Vision West Nottinghamshire College careers information
These resources have been created by Vision West Nottinghamshire College in partnership with DANCOP, to help support you going forward in your career choices. There is a document of sessions broken down into year groups, but you can access other sessions if relevant. We would strongly advise our year 11s to look at both the year 11 and year 12 resources.
