Hard to believe this has come around so quickly, but once again it’s time to celebrate the annual Scottish Careers Week!  During the week of 10th to 14th November a number of schools and organisations across Scotland will be supporting Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to shine a light on the variety of supports which are available to everyone to help them make positive career choices and shape their future pathway.

Over the last two years, all teaching and non-teaching staff participated in an exciting event where they shared their personal career journey’s through a poster with students across the school. Each member of staff related their experiences to the skills they developed through each part of their journey. This was hugely successful and the impact on student’s interest in staff’s career journey’s was fantastic to see! These career journeys were then shared with students through PSE lessons and this evoked productive discussions with students and helped to make the career journey more ‘real’.

This year, our S1 students will use the information from staff’s career journey’s to help them complete a Skills Treasure Hunt activity. This will take place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday week beginning Monday 10th November during US Time. S1’s will go to different classrooms and read the information staff have displayed on their classroom doors to help them answer three questions on their worksheet. This event will also be supported in PSE. P lease can we ask you as parents, to discuss this at home and perhaps be willing to share your own career journeys with your child.

Also, for your information, as part of the S5 PSE programme and in order to support Scottish Career’s Week, all S5 students will be participating in a variety of activities related to pathways onto positive and sustained destinations involving PSAT, Developing the Young Workforce North East, SDS and a number of outside organisations and businesses. The unit started this term with a ‘You’re Hired’ event delivered by SDS on Monday 27th October. This is followed by development of CV’s and personal statements in PSE and then a series of one to one mock interviews in school targeting the whole S5 year group over a three week period. Each mock interview is undertaken by a representative from a local businesses or organisation. 98% of S5 students attended their Mock Interview last year, so this year we are expecting 100% attendance! If you get a chance in your busy week, please show an interest in these activities with your child and perhaps share your own career journey with them too.

Finally, Skills Development Scotland would like to highlight an area of their My World of Work website dedicated to parents and carers which includes general advice about starting career conversations and a guide to Option Choices here as well as links to previous webinars on a number of relevant topics

I hope all of the above is of interest to you,

Jill Black

Careers link for Pupil Support