This academic year The Priory School will achieve 100% on all Gatsby Benchmarks as well as being Baker Clause and Provider Access Legislation compliant, something I am very proud to have achieved since taking on the role of Lead Teacher in Careers in 2019, despite the setbacks of Covid!

Our comprehensive careers education covers KS3 and KS4 with a wide variety of employer engagement, sub group foci, as well as working towards embedding careers within the curriculum too. We monitor impact through our detailed destinations data, evaluations and more recently the Future Skills Questionnaires which enable us to adapt our programme where we identify areas for development as well as highlighting our strengths.

My first project after taking on the role of Trust Improvement Consultant was to work with Coleham Primary School; this provided a new challenge as I knew nothing about primary careers education! The government in January 2023 announced their intention to introduce careers education to all primary schools over the coming years. After much research and meeting with a fantastic forward thinking Careers Hubs in Middlesbrough it became obvious that, whilst not prevalent in Shropshire, careers education is already having an impact in primary schools in other areas of the country. Together with Coleham Primary School we rewrote the Gatsby Benchmarks for primary education, evaluated the progress towards these benchmarks within current practice and established key areas of focus moving forwards.

Professionally, I have been a teacher for 17 years, the last 11 years at The Priory School. Prior to that I worked in Marketing and PR, so I bring both industry and education experience. I am also a keen runner who is always taking on, some would argue, ridiculous races all with the aim of challenging myself!

For me, I have really enjoyed the Careers Trust Improvement Role, working with other schools to not only support them in their careers journey but also share best practice between schools and develop my knowledge further.