Aims and Delivery of the Programme
Aims
The School’s Careers Education programme aims to ensure that each student:
- develops an understanding of themselves, their abilities and interests
- has access to accurate, up-to-date careers information and guidance that
- is presented in an impartial manner
- enables them to make informed choices about a broad range of career options
- helps them to fulfil their potential
- gains a greater knowledge of the range of education, training and careers opportunities open to them, including technical education qualifications and apprenticeship opportunities
- is fully informed and supported to make career-related decisions at key transition stages
- takes part in work-related activities in and out of school.
The programme conforms with the statutory guidance for schools on providing careers guidance provided by the Department for Education (DfE), which was updated in January 2023 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools).
This careers education programme has also been developed to meet the eight Gatsby Career benchmarks (http://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/focus-areas/good-career-guidance) for ensuring best practice, which have been adopted by the DfE and were recently updated for implementation in September 2025. The eight benchmarks comprise:
- Addressing the needs of each pupil
- Learning from career and labour market information
- A stable careers programme
- Experiences of workplaces
- Encounters with employers and employees
- Linking curriculum learning to careers
- Personal guidance
- Encounters with further and higher education
Full details of the updated benchmarks can be found here: updated Gatsby Career benchmarks.
Context
The School’s careers programme fits within the ethos and context of the school as a whole. As such, it is a highly aspirational programme, informed by its cohort of students and selective status and its history of leavers’ destinations and achievements. The percentage of students staying in education/employment after Key Stage 4 and continuing to education/training after Key Stage 5 each year is generally 100% (or close to that), with almost all currently choosing to go on to university and some taking up degree apprenticeships. See further information regarding leavers’ destinations below.
Delivery of the programme
Careers education at HBS is delivered in a variety of ways: students learn about career-related topics in their PSHCE lessons, through talks from internal and external speakers, various trips, work experience, one to one sessions with careers advisers and members of staff and also within individual departments and through the assembly and tutorial programme.
There are also specific career-related events, including the Higher Education and Medicine and Dentistry Evenings and UCAS Day held annually for sixth form students. The annual Careers Fair – at which around 50 volunteers from a wide range of different sectors and industries attend – is open to all students in Years 10 to 13.
All students in Years 7-13 have their own account with Unifrog which is a destinations platform providing impartial research on careers, subjects and courses. It is also the vehicle used in Sixth Form for processing UCAS applications within school. Students have allocated lesson time to access the platform and develop their profiles and can also browse the site in their own time using a laptop, phone or tablet.
Further details of the careers education for each year group are provided below (and further information regarding the School’s PSHCE curriculum can be found on the website here: https://www.hbschool.org.uk/our-pshce-programme/
The Careers Education Policy, summarising these points, can be found below: