Careers

Willowfield School is committed to providing students with high quality, rounded education that provides all students with the best start in life. This is also true of our comprehensive careers programme that gives students high quality, independent advice, and guidance with regards to careers, further and higher education and future life choices. 

At the end of the Willowfield experience, our students can compete with anyone, anywhere, professionally, and personally, in the world that is their future.

Examples of careers activities undertaken at Willowfield

• Further and Higher Education Taster Days, Workshops and Campus Visits, Local and Nationally
• Engagement with local employers for career talks and activities including Engie, L&Q and Waltham Forest Council
• Industry visits and trips to companies such as the BBC, BUPA, and Rothschilds & Co
• Year 10 and Year 11 annual Willowfield careers roadshow which includes colleges, sixth forms, apprenticeships, traineeships, and employers for both students and parents/carers to attend
• Y11 careers week with the NCS, including team building activities, employability skills and a social action project
• Career workshops and talks from external providers such as Barclays Lifeskills, East London Business Alliance, and Construction Youth
• Year 10 careers days including work experience and virtual work experience activities
• One to one career interview with a L6 Qualified Careers Advisor

Suggested Careers links for parents and students

Parents, carers, and guardians play an important part in career and education choices of young people.  We have put together a list of resources and websites we feel would be useful so you can support your young person with each step of their career journey:

Unifrog is a one-stop-shop where students can easily explore their interests, then find and successfully apply for their next best step after school (and college).  Unifrog will help your young person to explore their key interests and what career paths they can take to reach their goals!  It is full of useful tools and resources to research and log their career aspirations, employability skills, post-16 and post-18 options and applications including colleges, sixth forms and apprenticeships.  All students from Year 7 to 11 will be given their unique login details throughout the academic year, this will give them access to all the functions within the platform as well as a locker which both themselves, teachers and careers staff can save and post information into.  Please ask your young person to keep an eye on their locker as the careers team will save useful documents and links within it throughout the year.

The National Careers Service is a free service that provides information, advice, and guidance to assist you in making decisions about learning, training, and work.  As well as providing tools to look at live labour market information it also provides access to a live Careers Adviser:  https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk

UCAS provides you with both further and higher education information, research about qualifications, Colleges, Universities, Apprenticeships and more:  UCAS | At the heart of connecting people to higher education or https://www.ucas.com/further-education/find-career-ideas

Apprenticeships is a government website with information about how to become and apprentice including searching for live roles and case studies from those undertaking apprenticeships:  https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk

Amazing Apprenticeships has lots of information about Apprenticeships, Traineeships, T Levels and more.  Resources include a monthly parents pack which is free to download from here: Support for parents and guardians (apprenticeships.gov.uk). You can also download their parents perspective podcasts which is an exciting new podcast series for parents and carers, helping them to support their children with careers advice and guidance: The Parent Perspective Podcast - Amazing Apprenticeships

Barclays Lifeskills have various free to use tools, tips, activities, and resources to help your family build money and employability skills for their future:  Families (barclayslifeskills.com)

icould aims to help you to make the most of your potential by showing how others have used theirs, take their short ‘Buzz’ personality profile quiz to see which animal matches your personality type: Buzz quiz - icould

Please note that careers information is not limited to this list, there are many resources available to help and support parents and young people throughout their career path.

Labour Market Information

As well as the suggested careers links above, there are many other sources of Labour Market Information.

Nomis reports on official labour market statistics, information compares local to London and national figures.  Labour Market Profile – Waltham Forest: Labour Market Profile - Nomis - Official Labour Market Statistics (nomisweb.co.uk) 

LMI For All have provided this tool so you can find the UK Average information on different careers. Click on the card and type in your chosen profession to display the information, click on the more info link to display the common tasks of that role, click clear card to start again: