St Thomas More Catholic School works closely with the Careers and Enterprise company. This is an external organisation that supports schools to ensure they are following the DFEs newly devised Careers Strategy. The following information is an extract taken from this guidance.
“The careers strategy sets out that every school and academy providing secondary education should use the Gatsby Charitable Foundation’s Benchmarks to develop and improve their careers provision. This statutory guidance has been restructured around the Benchmarks with information on what schools need to do to meet each one. The Gatsby Benchmarks are not a statutory framework but by adopting them, schools can be confident that they are fulfilling their legal duties: the existing duties to secure independent careers guidance and provide opportunities to a range of providers to inform pupils about technical education qualifications or apprenticeships and the new duty to publish information about the careers programme on the school website.”
As an education establishment we ensure we use the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks as a foundation when planning our Careers Strategy. The effectiveness of our provision is inspected and audited by the Careers and Enterprise Company using the Compass Careers Benchmark Tool. This tool is used by schools and colleges in England to support the analysis and evaluation of careers activity against the eight benchmarks of best practice (known as the Gatsby Benchmarks). The Careers and Enterprise Company coordinate the Audit deadlines. This ensures the development of our careers strategy is ongoing to ensure best practice. St Thomas More is a member of the Black Country Careers Hub. We were part of wave 1 where only 9 schools were selected in the borough. Due to the success of participating Hub Schools every school within the Black Country has been invited to join wave 2. The benefits of being a Hub Member include additional funding and support. Below is the list of published deadlines from the Careers and Enterprise Company for the completion of audits until the end of 2021.
Compass audit deadlines for 2020-2021
Friday 23rd October 2020
Friday 12th February 2021
Friday 30th April 2021
Friday 9th July 2021
The date of our next review of the information published.
In line with the recommendations set out in Gatsby Benchmark 1, we as a school plan to review the published information on an annual basis, inviting feedback from key audiences.