How Careers Calendar can help you to meet Gatsby Benchmarks

Every school and college should have an embedded programme of career education and guidance that is known and understood by pupils, parents, teachers and employers.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

The Careers Calendar is your personalised career calendar. You can create online and offline events including virtual events, face to face activities like fairs, workshops and presentations. You can also create customised career learning activities, allowing your students to explore relevant careers information and opportunities.

Every pupil and their parents should have access to good-quality information about future study options and labour market opportunities. They will need the support of an informed adviser to make the best use of available information.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

Each event and career learning activity has a unique webpage packed full of information. You can share the webpage across your community for people to explore. This is a unique and innovative way for you to share careers information quickly. The Careers Calendar automatically creates this, which saves you an incredible amount of time. In addition, the Careers Calendar is an engagement platform, not a marketing platform, so we present information impartially and fairly.

Pupils have different career guidance needs at different stages. Pupils have different career guidance needs at different stages. Therefore, tailored advice and support should be available, which addresses the needs of each pupil. A school’s careers programme should embed equality and diversity considerations.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

We provide you with the tools to survey the career needs, interests, and aspirations of your students. The first thing to do in the Careers Calendar platform is to set up and send students bespoke surveys. We collate and summarise the data for you. This helps you to plan career education events and activities around the needs of your students. In addition, we provide you with a view of how each student responded. This feature alone evidences your efforts to meet the needs of each student.

All teachers should link curriculum learning with careers. For example, STEM subject teachers should highlight the relevance of STEM subjects for a wide range of future career paths.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

You can run subject-specific events and career learning activities. You can also give a user licence to a subject leader who can run their events. Their activity will feed into the main account for reporting. We actively encourage all organisations to join the Careers Calendar, including those working in STEM. However, Career Leaders are encouraged to invite their contacts to the platform for free.

Every pupil should have multiple opportunities to learn from employers about work, employment and the skills that are valued in the workplace. This can be through a range of enrichment activities including visiting speakers, mentoring and enterprise schemes.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

You are in the driving seat with this one. The central premise of the Careers Calendar is to bridge the gap between employers and schools. You can invite your organisation contacts to join the platform where they can complete their profile for free. You can then create events for your students to engage with as well as career learning activities. Also, you can access and easily share relevant information with students, e.g. employer events.

Every pupil should have first-hand experiences of the workplace through work visits, work shadowing and/or work experience to help their exploration of career opportunities, and expand their networks.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

The Careers Calendar platform bridges the gap between employers and schools, creating the first impression whereby students can explore. If an organisation joins the platform, they can upload an opportunity or opportunities for students to view. The Careers Calendar is the starting point for students to experience the world of work.

All pupils should understand the full range of learning opportunities that are available to them. This includes both academic and vocational routes and learning in schools, colleges, universities and in the workplace.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

We actively invite FE and HE institutions to the platform, if they aren’t part of the platform, then you can invite them. Again, they’ll be able to complete their profile and share relevant information for your students to explore.

Every pupil should have opportunities for guidance interviews with a trained careers adviser, who could be internal (a member of school staff) or external. These should be available at significant study or career choice stages. They should be expected for all pupils and timed to meet their individual needs.

How the Careers Calendar can help you

The Careers Calendar is the starting point for guidance. We don’t deliver on Gatsby 8. We recognise that many schools already have systems and processes in place to support the delivery of guidance. However, with the Careers Calendar platform driving careers engagement, you can rest assured guidance will improve because of a comprehensive engagement plan in place. Therefore, the Careers Calendar platform acts as a starting point that supports Careers engagement delivery.

In conclusion, the Careers Calendar supports schools with the delivery of a comprehensive careers engagement plan. It assists schools with the creation and delivery of a range of events (online and offline) as well as career learning activities. For instance, a school might use the platform to deliver their annual careers fair, supporting 16-18-year-olds with decision making for HE. Or they might use the platform to support a targeted programme of events for raising aspirations in STEM-related careers.

Above all, whatever your school decides to plan you can download a report for Compass. Furthermore, you can use the report for Ofsted, and each unique event link acts as evidence.