Ashton Park Careers Day
Ashton Park School was filled with inspiration, information and fun this month as we hosted a careers day for all of year 10! With the help of over 21 Employers and providers we were able to deliver a total of 28 workshops to a year group of 240 students! We took over multiple corridors and the sports hall to allow for the career-based activities to take place and make room for all the exciting stuff going on for the day…
Within the classrooms we had sessions ranging from construction and bridge building with Alun Griffiths to careers in healthcare and workshops from the Army. Aardman Animations put on a great workshop around film making and their specialities with stop-motion animation followed by the students being able to make their own Morph out of clay! Stantec presented an interactive session on where students created their own hotels considering the sustainability and design elements of this. Willmore Iles gave a great insight into architecture, exploring the micro scale with the students by getting them to draw a corner of the classroom, to the macro scale by drawing a wider area. The students got stuck in with writing down what materials they could identify in the classroom and learnt about the key skills required to succeed as an architect.
BDO provided a useful insight into the world of business, with the students working in teams for a Dragons Den style task to come up with their own business idea, evaluate the costing and justify why their idea deserved investment. Cratus Communications also encouraged the students to use their creativity and imagination to design a poster to advertise their upcoming careers day in February.
Over in the sports hall, Post 16 providers kindly came in to help deliver speed networking with the students. The speed networking was a chance for small groups of students to ask questions to a range of providers about the courses they offer, how they can be supported and what routes this could lead to. Every 5 minutes, students rotated to another to learn about all the various opportunities, post 16 routes and support available.
The day was a great success and all of year 10 were most definitely inspired and had their horizons broadened about the various careers available. It really showed in the feedback from the students with one student saying “this day has helped me consider a wider range of options” and another explaining “this has helped me think about what I would like to do after school and made me believe that I am able to get a really good job”. None of this could have been achieved without the immense help from the employers and providers and the co-ordination and support from the Ashton Park school staff. We would like to thank you all for making this day one to remember!