Our aims are to:

• Improve the labour market relevance of learning and
• Develop a whole school approach to delivering high quality careers guidance and a careers curriculum.

1. Vision and Purpose

“London’s youthful, expanding and entrepreneurial population needs to know where there will be work opportunities and they must be equipped with relevant experiences, skills and qualifications to take advantage of them from an early age. Young Londoners are not just competing with each other and the rest of the UK for jobs - they are also competing on a global basis. Action is required at every level. Parents, employers, schools, colleges, training providers, universities and career development specialists - all will need to work together to keep up-to-date with and communicate effectively on fast changing education and labour markets.”

London Ambitions: Shaping a successful careers offer for all young Londoners, London Councils, 2015

The London Ambitions offer recognises that careers matter to individual and to the wider economy and that career development encompasses a wide range of different aspects.

• A sense of direction
• Employability
• Developing as a person
• Skills for the future
• Progression

This strategy builds on the national requirements for careers, enterprise and work-related learning and tailored in line with the ethos our Academy.

• To ensure that young people make a successful school to work/HE transition including improving the employability skills of vulnerable and disadvantaged young people.
• To draw effectively on labour market intelligence to inform curriculum and careers provision
• To increase links between schools, further education, employers and higher education and improve the effectiveness and sustainability of these partnerships.

ATA is committed to ensuring that all students at the Academy are prepared for working life through robust behaviour and attendance policies, a developing culture of ambition and hard work, and a careers programme that engages students from year 7 and continually builds through to year 13 to ensure that all student are ambitious, understand the correlation between excellent attendance, excellent behaviour, hard work, results and ambitious career aspirations. 

1.1 Development priorities 

ATA is committed to delivering careers education in line with the eight Gatsby benchmarks and working towards Quality in Careers Standard/ Investors in Careers Award.

ATA is fully committed to the development of careers provision and regularly checks to ensure we are focusing on the correct priorities.

• All Heads of Year are trained to deliver careers assemblies and to support students with front line advice and guidance.
• ICAS mentors and SEN TAs are trained to deliver career-related advice and guidance to their mentees.

• Develop and implement a robust CPSE careers programme in Years 7 to 11.
• Review and upgrade the post 16 HEG programme.
• Engage employers and parents to speak to students on the subject of careers and the importance of subject choice when considering future careers.
• Publish programme of careers provision on the Academy website with our named careers advisor.
• Develop a system for recording achievement and progress of all students in relation to their career plans.
• Ensuring all students have access to expert careers guidance by the age of 16 and an opportunity for a further individual interview by the age of 17.
• Improving the evaluation of the effectiveness of the careers programme through tracking outcomes on progress, subject choice and destinations.
• Raise the profile of our careers work with parents through ensuring careers staff attend parents’ evenings for students in Years 9/10/11.
• Enhancing curriculum links to careers in Maths and Science.

1.2 Recognising national and local trends and expectations

London is a global city with an economy larger than many of the other member states of the EU¹. This provides many opportunities for our students but also big challenges. They are competing for jobs not just with each other but with people from across the UK and much of the rest of the world. The London workforce is typically better qualified and better paid than workers in the rest of the UK². It is also more entrepreneurial, with higher levels of self-employment.

53% of students in the borough achieve a level 4 qualification or above.  42% of the population in the borough have a level 4 qualification or above. This is compared to 50% in London, as a whole, and 37% across the UK².  Wandsworth is 7^th borough, nationally, for the proportion of economically active in a professional occupation (50.9%).

Our students’ attainment places us in the top 108 secondary schools in the UK.  Many of our students come from deprived backgrounds; nevertheless, they achieve outstanding outcomes, they leave confident and they are therefore well placed to engage with post 16 study of their choosing or an apprenticeship programme.

The proportion of young people in apprenticeships and jobs with training in London is around half the England average⁴. After Key Stage 4 only 2% of Wandsworth students enter apprenticeships, compared to 6% across England. Apprenticeships are a more popular choice after Key Stage 5, but apprenticeship destinations are still 6% compared to 7% across England⁵.

See www.gov.uk/government/statistics/destinations-of-ks4-and-ks5-pupils-2015-provisional for individual school destination figures]

ATA will ensure students have a clear understanding of the world of Economics and Business impact on their levels and the importance of understanding the best routes of accessing these worlds.

In order to help face the challenges of a competitive local labour market BTG will:

• Ensure up-to-date, user-friendly labour market intelligence/information (LMI) is readily accessible by young people, teachers and parents/carers.
• Students are given the opportunity to gain experience of the world of work. This could include career insights from industry experts, work tasters, mentoring, enterprise activities, participation in careers events and work experience in line with the latest Statutory Guidance – Careers Inspiration which is currently targeted for April 2017 as updated version has just appeared https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools.
• Ensure every student has the opportunity to evaluate the knowledge and skills they need for the workplace.