Employment

We aim to provide our young people with clear, evidence based employment pathways with opportunities for volunteering.

We give our pupils the guidance and knowledge around post 16 careers and employment to help them with their decision making.

Hollinwood Academy aims to follow the eight Gatsby benchmarks.

1. A stable careers programme
2. Learning from careers and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each student
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experiences of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance

Employability – Primary

The primary curriculum is delivered through HRE using Kapow and the PSHRE Association resources.

The employability and careers lessons at primary are covered in the Economic Well Being topics within the HRE scheme.

Employability – KS3

The curriculum is delivered through RSE and the EHCP intervention lessons, the topics are:

Year 7 – Financial decision making (saving, borrowing, budgeting & making choices, careers, teamwork & enterprise skills, raising aspirations)

Year 8 – Digital Literacy (Online Safety, Digital literacy, media reliability, gambling hooks)

Year 9 – Setting Goals (Learning Strengths, career options and goal setting as a part of the GCSE options process)

Employability – KS4

The curriculum is delivered through Employability and the RSE lessons that are differentiated depending on ability and final outcomes.

Some of the topics are:

Keeping safe online, digital footprint, CV writing, How to revise, Application form filling in.

Local employer links are used to help deliver some of these sessions as well as workplace safaris and mock interviews.

Careers

Vicky McManus, who is Hollinwood Academy’s designated careers advisor meets with students every Thursday to give regular careers advice. Students start to meet with Vicky from year 9 onwards

Work Experience Opportunities

HWA Blog - 07.06.2024

On Thursday, year 10 students went to Park Life at Heaton Park. Together they have had a full tour of the festival, been given an understanding of what goes on behind the scenes and talked about all the different job roles.

The lead of health and safety came and spoke to us about her role. How she has to organise medical help, transportation of goods and flooring and over sees everything and everyone that comes in and out of the festival.

The lead bar men spoke about their organisation skills, how they set it up, the decoration and how their team is of over 100 staff members that work in partnership, showing good communication skills.

The lead of artist organisation spoke about her role of communicating and organising artists needs and wants, to ensure they are comfortable in their environment before, during and after going on stage.

Each member of the team discussed their job role in detail and talked about their paths to getting into their role. They spoke openly about their personal lives and experiences, how some of them had diagnosis of ADHD, autism etc and it hasn’t stopped them in pursuing their careers. The message they wanted to get over to our students was “You can be anything you want to be in life, regardless of your journey!” we could not agree with this more.

Park Life

Destinations

As a part of the employability qualification, students are given the opportunity to participate in work experience.

College visits to support transition

As KS4 students prepare to leave Hollinwood Academy, students visit colleges within and outside the MAT with the support from the staffing and pastoral team.