One of our Summer topics is money and careers. As part of this topic, this year we organised a new special event - Careers Day.
Now I know that Year Six is very early to start thinking about careers, but the idea of the day was to encourage the children to develop goals and aspirations, not necessarily to force them to choose a career. It was intended to be a very exciting and inspirational day where they got to hear about different jobs and ask questions.
A few weeks before we sent out a request to parents in Year Six to ask if they would be prepared to come in to speak to the children about their career. We had eight responses and our headteacher agreed to make this up to nine.
The children heard from a human resources director, a bank manager, a policeman, a graphics designer, a librarian, an animal behaviour councillor, an NHS manager, a teacher and a semi-professional footballer. It was amazing to see how every person had taken the brief for the day and approached it in a completely different way.
The children were enthralled. Many of them had a career in mind before the day, but they said that listening to the speakers had encouraged them to think about personal qualities they needed to develop for the job, and to think about necessary qualifications. Some pupils were inspired by our speakers and decided they might go down a similar career path. Others still couldn't make their minds up. Whatever they felt about their careers, everyone said they had thoroughly enjoyed the day.
