All staff are responsible for giving good careers and guidance to students, this includes form tutors, teachers and support staff. Our Careers Leads are Ben Taylor and Jenny Onafowokan. They can be contacted by email on headteacher@westminster.sandwell.sch.uk and by phone on 0121 561 6884.

Careers/Futures programme in the Westminster School all staff will be entitled and encouraged to:

• Access to the school’s careers programme on the school website.
• Be invited to take part in the development of and review of any career’s activities, information and resources by using and contributing to them.
• Receive invitations to take part in careers and information events with pre-event information provided.
• Have the opportunity to comment and feedback on the usefulness of the careers /futures programme and have the opportunity to influence and improve it.
• Discussion at CPD to identify any training requirements related to career programme.
• Links to useful resources, sites and training.

Staff are in the ideal position to support students career development; this can be through a variety of ways including the following.

Tell career stories! Tell your students about the part-time jobs you had when you were a student, your early career and any volunteering experience you’ve undertaken.

Encourage students to tell you about their hopes and aspirations. They will be more motivated with careers if they know that their teacher listens and values their developing career plans.

Discuss with the students how certain activities are helping them develop certain skills and why they’re important in the workplace.

Mention or display posters relating to Careers linked to your curriculum area – use JED to help for ideas.

Suggest or bring a local employer or employee into the classroom that may be linked in some way to your subject.

On visits out, draw student’s attention to some of the businesses you may pass on the journey, target part of the visit to identify 2 or 3 different job roles and if possible, ask the person about their job.

By acting on any of these suggestions you will have contributed to Westminster School achieving Gatsby Benchmark 4, ‘Linking curriculum learning to careers. More importantly, you will also be helping the young people you teach to be more prepared for the next part of their exciting journey!