About Our Work Experience Programme

The careers programme at County High School: County Upper Directions, aims to support and educate our students to prepare them for their next steps following their time at County High. We have been working extremely hard to develop our pastoral programme, provide even more employment encounters, and inform our students regularly about current labour market information. In addition to these, we have been sharing and promoting Post-16 options, such as apprenticeships, T-Levels, and A-level option.

We are extremely excited to announce that we are launching ‘Work Experience’ to our current Year 10 students. This will take place between Monday 20^th June 2022 and Friday 24^th June 2022.  The aim of work experience is to help prepare them for the transition from school to work. Work experience can have a number of benefits, helping them to:

• Gain a greater understanding of the world of work and how businesses operate
• Learn what an employer will expect of them as an employee i.e. punctuality, dress code, commitment, etc.
• Learn new skills such as speaking to customers both face-to-face and on the phone, taking messages, teamwork, etc.
• Decide what kind of work they might choose when they leave school
• Develop self-confidence – many students appreciate being treated as an adult and respond well to being given responsibility

Timetable

Students are currently working hard preparing their CV’s and covering letters in preparation. Whilst we will support students, we do require students to attempt to find their own placement. To allow this to take place, we will require the following:

• Parents to complete the ‘Parental Consent Form’ and return it signed, to the student’s form tutor by Friday 18^th March 2022
• Support your child sending a covering letter, CV, employer agreement form and risk assessment form to a prospective employer(s). If you have not heard back within a fortnight, try again, or try another employer
• Secure a placement, with all paperwork completed and returned to the students form tutor by Monday 25^th April 2022

All paperwork is available to download from the attachments section on this page.

Work Experience During a Pandemic

As you will appreciate, we are trying to launch work experience ‘post pandemic’ – during this time, many working patterns of local employers have changed. Bearing this in mind, if the vast majority of students have been unable to locate a placement, we will have to revert to an inhouse virtual work experience offering. Parents and students will be notified of this outcome by Friday 6^th May 2022. If a student has been successful in obtaining a work experience placement, we would highly recommend them still attending during the summer holidays.

Contact Us

If you have any questions please email cu.careers@countyupper.org.