Evidencing alignment to Gatsby Benchmark 5

Rainham School for girls is evidencing it’s alignment to the fifth Gatsby Benchmark with Inspiring the Future by delivering activities that are having a positive impact on their students by helping them to explore different career possibilities, broadening their horizons and enabling them to make informed decisions. Read on to find out how Inspiring the Future can support you with meeting the Gatsby Benchmark 5.

Running a World of Work day

Rainham School have ran a series of World of Work days to help broaden students’ horizons and find out more information about the different professions and sectors out there. Why not follow their brief below to run your own?

  • Ask students to pick two careers that they are interested in finding out more about
  • Analyse the information to determine the most ‘popular’ careers (about 20)
  • Use Inspiring the Future and current employer relationships to invite local people and companies that work in the careers to come in and speak to students
  • Run sessions for an hour each with students attending at least two sessions
  • The volunteer talks about their own career route, the qualifications needed, a typical day and other linked job roles
  • Follow up in class by getting the students to do some online career research.

How this evidences alignment to the Gatsby Benchmark 5

Gatsby benchmark 5 states that students should participate in at least one meaningful encounter with an employer every year from the age of 11. This goes part way to help meet this benchmark.

And by asking students who attend to do some research prior to the session and come with prepared questions you can deepen the impact and ensure it is a more meaningful encounter with an employer.

Further activity ideas that allow students meaningful encounters with employers

Rainham School for girls has run more than World of Work days to ensure these are not one off encounters. They also provide opportunities for meaningful encounters with employers in the format of:

  • An annual careers fair
  • Work experience
  • CV and interview workshops.

All for which they invite volunteers in from the world of work to support.

The impact

Students come to Rainham School with a fairly narrow knowledge of the range of career options and by running activities with Inspiring the Future volunteers they introduce students to a range of people from a variety of careers. This opens up possibilities, expands career horizons, and allows students to challenge their own stereotypes.

Feedback is taken at every event and the response has been overwhelmingly ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, with students often asking to be added to sessions and making suggestions for more speakers.

Individually, students will either have had their choice of careers confirmed, or importantly find out that a career is not for them.

Why use Inspiring the Future?

Rainham School says that using our online platform reduces the time needed to find volunteers for some careers that have proven to be difficult to source someone from. With over 45,000 volunteers from a huge range of professions, Archaeologist to Zoologist, we’re not surprised this is the case.

Thank you to Kathy Moon, Director of Research and Careers Lead at Rainham School for girls, for taking the time to share how the school has used Inspiring the Future to positively impact students.

Ready to start planning your own activity to help evidence your alignment to the Gatsby Benchmarks? Find out more about how we can support this here, and to start inviting volunteers to support log in to your account or sign up at the top of the page.