Careers

Unifrog

At Sir Herbert Leon we use the impartial careers advice website Unifrog.  Unifrog is an online tool that each student can access to support them in preparing for the next steps in their educational pathway towards employment, informing them about varying careers and a full range of options available to them. Students can easily find and apply for every course and apprenticeship in the UK – including choices from sixth form and college, university courses and apprenticeships.

Unifrog helps to enable students to consider and plan for their transition to the right destinations.  Students can compare side-by-side every post-16 and post-18 opportunity in the UK. They can rank on lots of factors, such as starting salary, distance from home, drop out rate, and weekly study hours.  

Every student in the school from Year 7 to Year 11 can use the tool to log skills and experiences linked to employability, and to log activities in which they have felt a sense of achievement, helping to build a portfolio of evidence towards their next steps.

Unifrog also has an extensive careers library for students to browse, research and ‘favourite’ in their discovery of the fast-changing professional world they are preparing to enter.

Quality Assurance and Impact on Careers

Careers is regularly tracked, monitored and evaluated to know whether successful outcomes and positive impact have been achieved for all students. 

This happens through:

•  Academy monitoring (termly surveys and Compass+ submissions) 

• Annual Audit of Careers and Action plan for the year ahead 

•  Trust and Academy Monitoring

•  Validation through termly Intended Destinations Data 

•  External validation through Official DfE Destinations Data

•  Local validation via Enterprise Coordinator and Enterprise Adviser

•  Stakeholder feedback (teachers, parents and pupils)

• The academy assesses the careers programme’s impact on pupils through termly surveys and destinations data. The information on this page is updated annually during the autumn term.

Important Information

Sometimes parents ask how they can help in terms of providing information and support. Here are some suggestions that you may wish to consider:

• Looking at some of the careers websites with your son or daughter and familiarising yourself with them long before they reach the relevant year group. This will help them with future planning and thinking about their goals and aspirations for the future as well as their employability skills.  Please see our resources section for links. 

• Talk to them about the world of work in general terms – what you like and dislike about your own role, the jobs of those they know and come into contact with, some of the challenges and realities of the working world – as this helps them to build up a picture of what they want from work.  

• Encourage students to be independent in their research – but using the websites above is a good starting point.  

• If your son/daughter has a careers appointment, they will be emailed an action plan. Encourage them to discuss this with you.  

• Help them to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of different routes and how these may suit them as individuals.  

• Encourage them to start planning early – for example, we encourage students to start thinking about their plans for the end of Year 11, when they are in Year 10, or before.  

• If they take part in a Careers Day they will have a booklet full of work at the end of the day – encourage them to bring this home and share it with you and discuss what they have learnt.  

• Attend our Careers Fair with your son or daughter. 

• Link with us on Twitter and encourage your son or daughter to check our webpages regularly for details of careers news, speakers and updates. 

• We regularly seek feedback from our partners on the value of our careers provision, if you have any comments or suggestions please do let us know. 

Resources