From pharmaceutical biotechnology to chemical engineering, Year 6 pupils have spent a captivating Futures Week learning about careers, apprenticeships and university.
Whilst the world of work might seem like a long way off for our Year 6 classes, our Futures Week aims to build awareness of the post-18 landscape by getting pupils to think about all the options available to them when they leave school. The Futures Week programme is led by Miss Sarra Jenkins, Director of Future Pathways at Loughborough Grammar School, and invites a range of guest speakers to help encourage this thinking as they share insights from their role or experiences.
The week began with an assembly delivered by Miss Jenkins about the different paths pupils can take through school and beyond, introducing the concept of a ‘skills ladder.’ As an engaging starting point, pupils listed the skills they already have and researched ways they could develop these skills to benefit them in the future.
I hope that this week, we’ll be able to get you thinking about some of the different things you can do after school and show you the different ways you can get there.
Miss Sarra Jenkins, Director of Future Pathways
Taking part in the ‘skills ladder’ task provided the foundations needed for pupils to understand how careers progress. Over the course of the week, they were able to apply this thinking to the talks they received from members of our School’s parent community; they heard from a Consultant Paediatrician, a Pharmaceutical Biotechnologist and a Chemical Engineer about what their job is like and how they got there. Following the sessions, pupils spent time researching these careers and noting down their questions.
Alongside careers, pupils also had the opportunity to discover more about university as they heard from Philippa Manning, Widening Access Officer at De Montfort University. This talk gave an overview of what university is, what courses are on offer, how a university degree can impact your future career and what life at university is like.
To showcase their understanding, the final task of Futures Week encouraged pupils to embrace their creativity and create a video about all the things they learnt and the types of careers they might want to pursue. In their videos, pupils answered questions such as ‘what skills do you want to develop?’, ‘what three jobs might you want to try when you’re older?’ and ‘what is the one piece of advice you want to give yourself for when you are 18 years old?’
Reflecting upon the week, one pupil said: “There are hundreds of things you can do. I’ve learnt that not every career is the same and that people take different career paths. I’ve also learnt what apprenticeships are and what university might be like.”
To conclude the week, parents and carers were invited to watch the video showcase and hear a talk from Miss Jenkins about the evolving career landscape and what training this might require in the future.
We’d like to thank all our Futures Week guest speakers for inspiring our Year 6 pupils. We hope that this week has given our pupils a range of valuable insights into the careers, apprenticeships and university landscape and the foundations to explore their options further as they prepare for their next steps.
