Category: students

Student Leadership

Mahatma Gandhi once said “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  Imagine for a moment, a world where everyone selflessly serves one another, where kindness and compassion are our guiding principles. This is the world that Gandhi envisioned. Gandhi, a man of peace and wisdom, believed that the path to self-discovery and fulfilment lies in serving others. He found himself by losing himself in service. He was not alone in this belief. Our own Catholic tradition teaches us the importance of service. In the Bible, Jesus said, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)

When we give to others, when we offer our time, skills, and kindness we discover our true selves. Service helps us connect and find purpose.

At SJB we believe that students should be given a wide range of opportunities to serve others; and to develop and practise leadership skills in preparation for life beyond school. We encourage students to engage in the wider life of school, and we support, develop and challenge them to be responsible, resilient, independent young people who are willing to serve the community. There are so many leadership opportunities available to students, below is just a flavour of what is currently on offer.

Many of our Student Leadership activities focus on improving the quality of learning and teaching in the classroom, supporting the school’s aim to be a place where everyone enjoys learning and, through a wide range of opportunities, grows into happy, confident, resilient and articulate young people who leave SJB equipped to lead fulfilling lives and make a positive contribution to society. By trying new things, being creative, solving problems and embracing their responsibilities individuals develop in character and our community is strengthened.

Aims of our Student Leadership Programme

  • To empower students to work in partnership with staff towards shared goals.
  • To enable creativity to flourish as the school community benefits from the wealth of experiences, ideas, skills and sense of fun that students bring.
  • To provide opportunities for students to develop leadership skills through a variety of inspiring, challenging and valued projects which impact positively on learning, teaching and well-being for both students and staff at Parliament Hill School.
  • To prepare students for Higher Education and for achieving personal and professional excellence in life after formal education.

The Student Council

The Student Council provides all students with an opportunity to share their views and offer the School Leadership Team advice and guidance. The Student Council empowers students and helps to ensure that everyone is kept up-to-date and feels involved with decisions that are made; it also enables everyone to take action and to lead change.

Two Form Reps from every Tutor Group are elected to represent their peers and sit on the Student Council. The Sixth Form are represented by the Head Boy, Head Girl, Deputy Head Boy and Deputy Head Girl. These Form Reps:

  1. Take pride in their role and act as role models.
  2. Gather the views and opinions of their Tutor Group ready to feedback to their Year Reps and the Head of Year.
  3. Meet with their Head of Year at least once a half term to provide feedback and raise key issues affecting the year group (in a scheduled Year Meeting)

From this group of 112 students, Year Reps have been elected by their peers to sit on the Student Leadership Team and meet periodically with Miss Dwyer, Mr Kelly and Mr Granville Hamshar.

In 2023-24 all Form Reps were consulted on the following areas of school life:

  • The PSHE / RSE Curriculum Model
  • Behaviour and Anti-bullying
  • The school catering service
  • Careers and the wider curriculum offer (including trips and extra-curricular provision)
  • Timetable structure and double lessons

The individual year groups have also looked at other pertinent aspects of school life.

Their valuable input has led to change in several key policies and practices in school.

 

The Student Committees

We currently have nine different Student Committees. These are action teams that work with a member of staff to lead change within the school. The Committees for 2023-24 together with the lead teacher are detailed below:

  • Anti-bullying – Miss Duke
  • Apple Ambassadors – Miss Atherton
  • Chaplaincy – Mrs Hodgson
  • Charity – Mrs Arfield
  • Diversity – Miss Brooks & Mrs Ray
  • Environment – Miss Townend
  • Learning & Teaching – Miss Cavell
  • Careers Ambassadors – Miss Paling

The Committees are open to all students who wish to join; please contact the relevant teacher for more information.

Sixth Form Leadership Team

In addition to representing the views of their year group, the Sixth Form Leadership Team also focus on: diversity, wellbeing, charity, environment, chaplaincy and learning and across the whole school, working closely with our Student Committees and the younger students to support them in their leadership roles. These areas are fluid and reflect priorities according to the cohort. The Sixth Form Leadership Team are elected in the second half of the autumn term to ensure that all external students joining in Year 12 have the opportunity to participate; their term runs from January to January.

There are also a number of additional Sixth Form leadership roles which we look forward to a significant number of students being involved in to support both the school and local community:

  • Mentoring younger students
  • Break duty
  • Litter picking
  • Support in main school lessons
  • Car-parking for events and functions
  • Meeting, touring with and talking to visitors
  • Leading sports teams

 

Information for Students

Make the most of National Careers Week 2024 – 3th-8th March 2025

If you haven’t given your future much thought so far, National Careers Week is a great time to start asking yourself five big questions:

1. What is the Career Zone for me?

There are hundreds of industries out there – each one with hundreds of career paths you could pursue. These industries can be called “Career Zones” –  the Success in Schools partnership has brought 33 of them together for you to explore. Discover what jobs you can find in each Career Zone and what you need to do to qualify for your dream profession.

2. Apprenticeship or University?

These days, apprenticeships offer a real alternative if you want to train and gain qualifications in a paid job. In fact, with a degree apprenticeship, you can even study for a university degree while earning a wage. However, for certain careers – particular medical professions, for example – you’ll need to go to university. University is also a great option if you want to study your favourite subject at a higher level.

Take a look at this guide to choosing between university or an apprenticeship.

3. How can my school subjects help?

Did you know that religious studies could help you pursue a career in charity work? Or that history could lead to a career in law? You might be surprised to learn where your favourite subject could take you. Read these guides to different school/college subjects to find out about the benefits different subjects can bring to your career.

4. What skills do I need to improve?

Do you know what interpersonal skills are? What about cognitive skills? And what is the difference between skills and qualities? Discover this selection of guides to help you understand what these skills are, why they are useful and how you can develop them inside and outside school or college.  Read these guides to help you get started.

5. How can I improve my CV?

A good curriculum vitae is your passport to employability. Your CV lists your qualifications, employment history and any voluntary work or extracurricular activities you’ve done. As well as demonstrating your impressive record, a good CV is concise, clear and error free.

SJB Next Steps Opportunities Blog

Created specifically for our Sixth Form students, this blog highlights all upcoming careers related opportunities available to students. Speak to Mrs Risman for more information.

Latest Opportunities…

A summary of upcoming events that may interest you:

Careers Fair – GLive Guildford – 28 Feb 2025  – Get tickets here

STEM Days – Smallpeice Trust

The Gatsby Benchmarks

Labour Market Information

Labour Market Information is vital in providing young people and their parents with information about career routes and salaries.

It helps young students explore key aspects about a particular area, including:

  • The sectors, industries and businesses that operate there
  • The jobs that exist
  • The number and type of job vacancies
  • The sectors and industries that are predicted to grow in the coming years.
  • Travel to work patterns
  • The kinds of skills that are/will be needed by industries and businesses.
  • Pay and progression patterns

Labour Market Information For All

The LMI for All portal provides high quality, reliable labour market information (LMI) to inform careers decisions for young people.

Here you can find out where to access information on the labour market and link through to some websites using LMI for All data. You can also explore data using our widgets, Careerometer and Skillsometer.

When thinking about future careers, you will want to understand:

    • The competition they will face – ‘How easy is it to get into?’
    • Entry and progression routes – ‘How do I get into it?’
    • The rewards available – ‘What’s the pay like?
    • The availability of jobs in their ‘travel to work area’ – ‘Can I travel to this work easily?’
    • Recruitment and selection and the prospects of securing employment in a particular job – ‘Could I get into this type of work?’
    • The value of particular qualifications, experience or training – ‘Do employers accept this qualification?’

You can access the lates labour market information here:

Labour Market Information

Surrey Careers Hub LMI

LMI For All Careerometer

Information for Parents

Career Resources for Students and Parents

The resources below can help students and their parents to start thinking about careers and ‘next steps’.

They cover topics such as choosing a career and different routes into the world of work, as well as providing detailed information on specific careers.

They can also help students to make decisions about the next steps in their education, from Year 7 through to choosing degree subjects in Year 13, whether or not they’ve decided on a career.

National Careers Week (3-8 March 2025)

National Careers Week is a one-week celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK, held every March. The aim is to provide a focus for careers guidance activity at an important stage in the academic calendar to help support students develop awareness and excitement about their future pathways.

The National Careers Week website also provides parents with the information they need to help their teenage children make the right choices to create successful futures after GCSE and sixth form.

Watch the NCW Parents Assembly with your child to encourage them to think about what they should be considering and doing at their stage of their SJB careers learning journey.

The Helping Your Child Begin Their Career Journey guide is also a very useful source of information to support parents with their child’s future career plans.

Unifrog

Unifrog is a one-stop-careers-shop used intensively at SJB where students can explore their interests, then find and successfully apply for their best next-step after school.  Unifrog’s lessons and resources are embedded into our Year 7 to Year 13 spiral careers curriculum.

Parents, carers and teachers can access all tools on Unifrog to learn what options are available, access good quality information, and search for opportunities to support your child which making their choices.

Parent and Carer access to Unifrog

Go to www.unifrog.org/student and click ‘Sign in for the first time’. You’ll be asked for some details and a form code.

To request your access code, please email Miss Paling b.paling@sjb.surrey.sch.uk – with the subject line “Request Parent Unifrog Access”

After signing up, log into Unifrog using your email address and password via the student sign-in page.

Parents and carers can then sign up to receive weekly summary emails.  This summary will show you any shortlists your child may have made on the Unifrog platform.  It will also detail any interactions logged against your child, such as Careers Fairs taking place or careers interviews
coming up.

 

Other Useful Resources

Year 7 & 8

Discover the world of work and what it is like to work in different jobs by watching short video clips and interviews.

Year 9

Explore career ideas using Fast Tomato, a highly regarded, accredited site that helps students and parents to explore career ideas. After completing a short interests-based questionnaire, Fast Tomato is able to produce an immediate report showing aspirational, career and subject suggestions matched to the individual.

There are over 600 career descriptions including videos, case studies and useful links. In addition, there is information on entry requirements, routes to careers and salaries.
As students approach Options time, it is worthwhile to attempt the Fast Tomato questionnaire again and see how your child’s aspirations have changed.

The video below talks about what you need to consider when choosing Options.

Choosing Your Options Wisely

icould is focused on helping students choose options with advice, videos and information on subjects, careers, employers and much more.

A Levels

Research on how to select subjects that leave doors open to careers or degree subjects you might want to pursue – even if you’re not yet sure what you want to do in the future. We have lots of career resources, including university prospectuses, career guides, apprenticeship information.

Icanbea has a great Career Wizard tool that can help to match subjects your child enjoys with their personal strengths and suggests career ideas that can then be investigated further.

Other useful websites for helping students choose their A Level subjects are Target Careers and Informed Choices.

Connecting Students and Employers

Businesses have a vital role to play in partnering with schools and colleges to raise ambition and improve performance.

By providing young people with work experience and becoming involved with careers guidance, employers can spell out the value of the skills and knowledge developed at school and open students’ eyes to career opportunities.

Research studies suggest that young people particularly value information on jobs and careers when obtained in a real workplace and through contacts with working people.

There are a number of ways in which you can help our students:

  • Site visit – let our students visit your organisation and see how it works.
  • Work experience – introduce students in Year 12 (16/17 years old) to working life within your organisation.
  • Assembly and classroom visits – join a class at the start of a lesson and chat to the student about how the subject relates to the working world.
  • Provide apprenticeships – could you provide an apprenticeship scheme to those students wishing to venture into the working world through this route?

We also work closely with our designated local Enterprise Coordinator from the Careers and Enterprise Company, to ensure that our careers curriculum is rigorous and comprehensive and meets the needs of every child in our care.

The Careers and Enterprise Company would like to engage more with parents too so, if you are interested in accessing information about career pathways, apprenticeships and employers in the Hampshire and Surrey area, please visit their Parents Facebook page to join their facebook group, where new information well be regularly added and can be found by searching posts/topics.

For further information, or if you are business that would like to engage with us in delivering our Careers, Education and Guidance programme, please contact Miss Paling b.paling@sjb.surrey.sch.uk 

Careers Provider Access Policy Statement

Apprenticeships

National Apprenticeship Week (10-16 February 2025) is a fantastic opportunity for you to learn more about apprenticeships and how they might be an exciting option for you when you leave school or college.

There are many options available to young people after they leave school. Apprenticeships are one such key route into a successful career.

What’s an apprenticeship? It is a genuine job, with training, meaning you can earn while you learn and gain a nationally recognised qualification. Find out more by exploring this National Apprenticeship website 

Apprenticeships are now available up to degree level and beyond. Over 70 national universities are currently offering a range of degree apprenticeships with more to be confirmed throughout the year.

  • Earning a salary and paid holiday;
  • Excellent progression opportunities, whether looking to study further or climb the ranks within the workplace;
  • Increased future earning potential;
  • Apprentices enjoy marked salary increases on finishing their training and those completing a higher apprenticeship could see increased earnings over their lifetime.

To continue learning about apprenticeships and the exciting careers available, visit: www.apprenticeships.gov.uk

The government has a fantastic website where you can learn more about the range of apprenticeships available, how to search and apply for apprenticeships, what roles are available by interest area and more. You can also watch real stories from apprentices about their experiences.

For further information, please read:

 

Careers Programme

We are committed to providing a well-structured Careers Education and Guidance Programme (CEGP) for all students in Year 7 to 13.

We strive to ensure students experience a full, varied and interesting careers journey, having the opportunity to explore their own interests, skills, and passions; understanding the wealth of jobs and education available to them once they leave school.

Our whole-school Careers Programme follows the Career Development Institute‘s (CDI) 2021 Career Development Framework that identifies the skills, knowledge and attitudes that students need to have a positive career.

Through a coordinated and embedded spiral careers curriculum across our departments, our students develop six career development skills required to have positive careers.  They are developed alongside academic skills, knowledge and employability skills (the skills required for work and employment):

  • Grow throughout life – Grow throughout life by learning and reflecting on yourself, your background, and your strengths
  • Explore Possibilities – Explore the full range of possibilities open to you and learn about recruitment processes and the culture of different workplaces
  • Manage Career – Manage your career actively, make the most of opportunities and learn from setbacks
  • Create opportunities – Create opportunities by being proactive and building positive relationships with others
  • Balance life and work – Balance your life as a worker and/or entrepreneur with your well-being
  • See the big picture – Paying attention to how the economy, politics and society connect with your own life and career

The programme builds progressively and aims to provide students with the skills and knowledge they require to be able to make an informed choice about their future options.

Our careers provision offers tailored support for all our students, meaning that every student, including SEND students’ individual needs are met.

Meanwhile, our SJB PSHE Careers Programme is guided both by careers guidance and access for education and training providers as well as the eight Gatsby Benchmarks, identifying the elements of good practice in career guidance during form times and whole school assemblies.

Careers PSHE Lesson Programme by Year Group 2024-25

Click on the Key Stage Links to discover how our Careers Programme is implemented across our year groups.

Key Stage 3 Careers Information

Key Stage 4 Careers Information

Key Stage 5 Careers Information

Careers Policy

Please find below a summary of our Careers Policy (October 2023) which includes the latest Provider Access Policy regarding mandatory encounters (from January 2023):

Provider Access Legislation – Careers Provider Access Policy Statement (PAL) – May 2024

Student Entitlement

All SJB students in years 8 to 13 are entitled:

  • to find out about technical education qualifications and apprenticeships opportunities, as part of a careers programme which provides information on the full range of education and training options available at each transition point;
  • to hear from a range of local providers about the opportunities they offer, including technical education and apprenticeships – through options events, assemblies and group discussions and taster events;
  • to understand how to make applications for the full range of academic and technical courses.

For our students, these encounters are mandatory and there will be a minimum of two encounters for pupils during the ‘first key phase’ (year 8 to 9) and two encounters for pupils during the ‘second key phase’ (year 10 to 11).

For pupils in the ‘third key phase’ (year 12 to 13), particularly those that have not yet decided on their next steps, there are two more provider encounters available during this period, which are optional for pupils to attend

For further information, please read our Careers Student Entitlement Statements (October 2023).

Monitoring, Evaluation and Review

The governing body, in conjunction with the headteacher and Careers Lead, review these policies on an annual basis, taking into account the success of supporting students in accessing post-16 education and training.

We also work closely with our designated local Enterprise Coordinator from the Careers and Enterprise Company, to ensure that our careers curriculum is rigorous and comprehensive and meets the needs of every child in our care.

The effectiveness of this policy will be measured in several ways:

  • Feedback from stakeholders including students and parents, through mechanisms such as parent survey;
  • Feedback from external visitors to the school such as the School Improvement Partner (SIP) or Ofsted;
  • The number of students who are NEET in October having left the school in the previous summer. This figure can be compared to national figures as well as against the equivalent figure from similar schools both nationally and within Surrey.

Next Careers Programme Review Date – 1st November 2024.

Careers Guidance