National Careers Week 2023 – 6th-11th March
National Careers Week is a one-week celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK. 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 Parents Guide to National Careers Week 2023 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.
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.
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.
Year 7 and Year 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.