Statutory info

A dedicated careers team is needed to ensure the above is possible, at Marriotts these are:

Careers Leader: Carly Wright

Careers Administrator:  Kathryn White

Curriculum Co-ordinator: Tiffany Demetriou, Assistant Headteacher Curriculum

STEM Co-ordianator: Lottie Tomlinson

SFYP Herts IAG Personal Advisor: Ali Sheriff and Maria Meehan

Enterprise Advisors: Joe McHugh

Careers Governor: Stuart Dunlop

We work with a number of organisations to ensure we can provide an outstanding Careers Provision:

The Careers & Enterprise Company - supports Marriotts  with invaluable advice and  careers resources. They are the national careers network set up to inspire and prepare young people for the fast-changing world of work. Their role is to connect schools and colleges, employers and careers programme providers to create high-impact careers opportunities for young people across England.

Services for Young People Herts - have supported the school over a number of years with our Careers provision. The help organise our Work Experience placements for our Year 10 student and 13, they deliver workshops and  also provide us with a personal adviser who sees every Year 11 student for at least one meeting, often two. They offer support at GCE and GCSE results days, at options evenings and on request.

Herts University - We have also joined forces with the University of Hertfordshire and we are part of their Aspire Higher Programme.

Aspire Programme

Aspire, is a project run by the charity Transitions UK. The Aspire Project which is based in Watford and Stevenage, is aimed at supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Project works with young people aged 14-15 years old, who have been highlighted as needing extra support via weekly mentoring sessions. The main aim of the role would be to support young people to make positively informed choices via advising and guiding.  A part of the mentoring task  entails meeting ‘individual needs’, by working on various aspects such as managing difficult emotions and challenges, enhancing emotional literacy to enable young people to verbalise their feelings, self-esteem, school attendance, supporting in obtaining life skills and so on. A vital part of our role is also to support the young person to maximise their opportunities and potential by encouraging them to learn new skills and refine those which may need improving such as communication skills and development of empathy and self- awareness.

Unifrog – they help bring into one place every apprenticeship, university course and college course in the UK, as well as career opportunities, such as MOOCs and School Leaver Programmes. The platform makes it easy for students write their CVs and Personal Statements and record their key skills.

Careers Provision and Gatsby Benchmarks

The Marriotts School is committed to providing the highest quality careers provision, adopting the government’s required Gatsby Benchmarks at the core of its Careers programme. Outlined below are details of each of the eight Benchmarks and how the school has adopted them in its Careers Provision:

1. A stable careers programme: Every school and college should have a careers programme that is known and understood by the school community.

Our Careers programme is co-ordinated by our Careers Lead and is embedded into the school curriculum and our enrichment activities. The programme gives the school a clear strategic overview of a student's learning journey, outline their skills and knowledge and helping them with decisions and pathways. This programme continually develops to meet the needs of our students and we are constantly seeking feedback from students, staff, Governors and parents to help us with this process. You will find link to our Careers Policy, plan and programme on this website.

2. Learning from career and labour market information: Every pupil and their parents should  access to high-quality information about their future education options and job opportunities.

At Marriotts we liaise with parents through our weekly newsletter regarding careers, we use a Careers Platform called Unifrog to provide our students with a wealth of advice and opportunities, to ensure they are fully informed to make the best decisions for them. Unifrog is also a useful platform for parents to use and login details have been sent to all of our parents. Student have regular opportunities during Marriotts Lifeskills and in form time to use Unifrog and its resources. From year 7 students can be finding out about the local and national labour market. We also have a fully resourced Careers Area or hub that contains carefully-selected resources that meet the needs of different year groups and groups. Printed information is available, such as prospectuses, careers books, options booklets and posters illustrating different Careers. Our alumni board is particularly popular and a good way of students relating to future Careers. We also sign post Careers Resources to be used on-line and our Careers page acts as a Virtual Learning Environment for students both past and present as well as parents. This can be useful for Apprenticeship’s information as well as links to a whole host of new resources and updated information.

Further information regarding Unifrog can be found here 

3. Addressing the needs of each pupil: Pupils should receive careers guidance differentiated by their stage of education. Advice and support should be tailored to the needs of the pupil, and equality and diversity should always be taken into consideration.

At Marriotts we have devised a careers programme for each of our year groups and are mindful of students who may need additional support and the need to avoid stereotypes around careers advice. For example, we are actively supporting a number of girls to pursue Engineering, and mechanics and a number of our boys are considering health care roles and catering opportunities. Additional support is given to students with SEN and to those disadvantaged in other ways, perhaps economically and environmentally. Students in each year group follow a very specific programme for their needs, for example our Year 8 students will receive advice to help them choose their options, as they start the start the KS4 programme in Year 9. The school also works in collaboration with the Enterprise Advisory Network to analyse and map the most appropriate opportunities against the labour market of our local area.  We also keep systematic records of the individual advice given to each student and subsequent agreed decisions. All students have access to these records to support their career development through Unifrog. The aim is that each student overtime will have access to comprehensive records, allowing them to draw on achievements, careers experiences and employer encounters and use them to aid success at interviews and applications.

The school also collects and maintains accurate data for each student on their education, training or employment destinations for at least three years after they leave  Marriotts. This enables us to review our provision to track the consistency and the impact of our careers programme.

4. Linking curriculum learning to careers: All teachers should link curriculum learning with careers. Teachers of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects should highlight how STEAM subjects can lead to a wide range of career paths.

Our teachers use their subject knowledge to further inform students of opportunities in their area of expertise and we have a thriving STEAM community and a number of opportunities that have arisen from this. All subjects have planned for lessons to inspire career choices and in many subjects students can identify how careers can enhance subject learning  e.g. personal financial planning skills taught in maths, self-presentation skills taught in English. Other examples include

Careers lessons are also taught in Marriotts Life Skills and can include looking at Employability Skills, interview techniques and writing a C.V. We also encourage Careers Learning through co-curriculum activities. Eg in Year 7 the students took part in the "CREST Discovery Award". These awards are organised by the British Science Association and recognise that a student has completed a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and maths) project by demonstrating their ability to do research, reach conclusions, and to work in a team. We also organised a Music Workshop as part of the level 2 Music Course for Year 10 and 12 Music students. It was delivered by IEM - Industry in Education for Music. Visiting professional artists coached the students and give them an insight into life as a professional musician as well as other job roles within the industry. The students certainly felt they benefitted from such an insight. Further information on STEM activities can be found on our website.

5. Encounters with employers and employees: Every pupil should be provided with numerous opportunities to learn from employers about the world of work and the skills that are valued in the workplace.

At Marriotts we achieve this through a range of activities such as visiting speakers, mentoring and enterprise schemes. This Gatsby Benchmark is a very central feature of our careers programme. We provide our students with a wealth of opportunities to meet with employers notably through our yearly careers fair, and our weekly programme of visiting guest speakers. We also operate a mentoring programme through our work with ELSA, Herts University and our Enterprise Advisor. We  have taken part in a  number of enterprise schemes through the Aspire programme, Work the Change and First Give to name but a few. We feel in this way that we work together in creative ways with employers to ensure students build a rich picture of the world of work and are well prepared to take up a place in the workplace.

6. Experiences of workplaces: Every pupil should have first-hand experience of the workplace through visits, shadowing and/or work experience.

At Marriotts each of our year 10 students have a work experience placement in year 10. We find this provides them with an invaluable first hand experience, and for many is the insight they need to really consider their next steps. We also offer this as an opportunity to our Post 16 students and during Careers week in the Autumn Term we offer all students and parents the opportunity to take Your Child To Work for a day or two. This is hugely popular and the feedback is very positive, for many it is their first opportunity to experience a work environment. In Year 10 and post 16 Students are active participants in the process of choosing workplace experiences that will fulfil their needs and interests, often with the help of their families. Also as a school we work with YC Herts to give us a bank of work experience opportunities so students are not dis-advantaged if they can’t find their own. The school monitors the quality of placements offered and ensure students are  prepared well for the experiences they are about to have, so they can achieve the best from it. Students are also well-supported during the workplace experience and have opportunities to talk with a trusted and familiar adult about what they are doing and finding out, when a member of staff from school comes to visit them. After the experience, students undertake structured reflection during a Life Skills lesson to reinforce what they have learned. Some also feedback in an assembly and are willing to talk to younger year groups regarding their experience. Feedback from employers is also valuable both to school and to the individual students.

We are also fortunate at Marriotts to have the support of ELSA and our Enterprise Advisor who provides us with a rich source of employer contacts. The have helped with specific work placements, sometimes for our SEN students or a placement opportunity that has been hard to find. ELSA have put together a comprehensive programme of careers talks for students in Year 10 and post 16, and from Year 8 all of our students experience a Careers Fayre once a year. Year 7 have also had the opportunity to meet an employers, during their trip to Colchester Zoo they are introduced to people in different roles. Stevenage FC also work closely with the school and speak to the year group in an assembly highlighting the many different job roles that are undertaken at the club, from marketing to chef to coaching and administrative and financial tasks.

7. Encounters with further and higher education: Every pupil should understand the full range of learning opportunities available to them, including both academic and vocational routes.

At Marriotts we ensure all of our students are fully informed of the different routes open to them and do so through assemblies, visiting speakers, our careers week and by talking to our careers advisors. For our post 16 students those who are interested in applying for university have all had at least two visits to universities to meet staff and students. As a school we are keen to invite in providers as well as organising visits. For example we work closely with Herts University who provide us with a whole host of opportunities, their Aspire programme is linked on our website. We are developing a partnership with our local colleges and organising visits so our students can have first hand experience of what further education entails. We are also reaching out to Apprenticeship Providers and have organised guest speakers so our students are also aware of this route. They also come along to our Careers Fayre. In this way we can ensure that our students have the opportunity to be aspirational and to make the right choice for them.

As a school as well as planning for cohorts we can also plan careers based activities for targeted groups, such as Pupil Premium, gifted and talented students and students with special educational needs and disabilities. Working closely with families to help provide the right careers support is also important. Our Unifrog Platform also provides students with invaluable and impartial information regarding destinations and is particularly useful for UCAS applications and researching different Universities.

8. Personal guidance: Whenever significant study or career choices are being made, every pupil should be given the opportunity to take part in a guidance interview with a careers adviser – this could be a member of school staff or an external provider, provided they are trained to an appropriate level.

Currently at Marriotts our students have the opportunity in year 11 and 13 to talk to our Careers Guidance Advisor from YC Herts and our staff are always on hand to advise students of the best pathway available to them. Our year 8s are also given the opportunity to have a guidance interview with our careers advisor prior them making their option choices.

Students are also given advice during Options and IAG Evening’s, through an Options booklet, during their Life Skills lessons and assemblies, and when using the Unifrog platform. During Careers Week students may also experience taster lessons, go on visits and have presentations on particular topics, such as apprenticeships, labour market trends or employability. These are led by school staff as well as external professionals who work with the school eg University of Hertfordshire, YC Herts, local colleges and Apprenticeship Providers. As with any year group going through a transition point there are a number of school staff on hand to support which includes senior staff, Year Leaders, form tutors, learning support staff. There is good communication amongst staff and effective record sharing so students can be assured of the best possible support in transitional points in their school lives.

Careers Policy - this is a statement of the guiding principles which underpin the school’s approach to the career learning and development of its students. It can be found here

Policy Statement on Provider Access - This policy statement sets out the school’s arrangements for managing the access of providers to pupils at the school for the purposes of giving them information about the provider’s education or training offer. This complies with the school’s legal obligations under Section 42B of the Education Act 1997. This can be found here