Careers

Careers at Beechwood: An Introduction

Beechwood School is committed to developing workplace skills alongside academic skills.

Careers’ Education and Guidance has an absolutely essential role to play in preparing students for choices, changes and transitions they will encounter as they become adults.  As such, it forms a major aspect of our PSHCE programme, as well as being integrated into Enterprise Learning across the school.

The school provides expert careers’ guidance through small groups or one-to-one meetings.  All students at KS4 and KS5 will receive at least one, 1:1 interview with our Careers’ Adviser and are encouraged to speak with their personal tutor at any time.

Please see the planned careers activities for this academic year: Careers Activities 2025-2026

Contact Details

Ms Petya Krasteva-Ilkova - Director of Careers
p.ilkova@beechwood.slough.sch.uk 

Careers Networking at Beechwood - A day at GE Healthcare - GirlsGetSET Programme 2025-2026 by Keira Chitty (Year 8)

In February, we went to the GE HealthCare centre and studied many interesting things.

Firstly, we discussed the elderly with dementia and how we could help them on a daily basis. To get more of an idea we used a roleplay character called Margaret to get the understanding of the elderly with dementia.

Secondly, we got a large piece of paper, and created a poster with many ideas on what we could create to help people like Margaret.

After we had chosen our final idea and topic, which was hygiene related, we had decided to create a clock which goes off loudly every hour, leading whoever is using it to the clock. It then informs them what they have to do, to maintain good hygiene. For example, washing hands, going shower and many other cleaning ideas.

When we had finished with our ideas, we then all as a group split up and spoke to loads of mentors which were helping us understand Margret’s situation. We asked them questions about what their first jobs were, what they do know, what they wanted to be, how far they travel and if they like their job.

Once we had finished asking about their life, we walked to a cabin style house across from the centre we were in. In this massive place which looked very modern on the inside. It  included two main rooms.

The first room included many machines which showed us how they scan babies in the womb and also how they would measure a baby after it had been born using a big toy panda.

After we had finished looking at how they work all of those expensive machines we walked to the next room and discovered a presenting room. In this room all the groups including other schools all sat down and started presenting their ideas one at a time.

During our time in that room, we went in front of the judges and presented our dementia clock and how it functions. Around thirty minutes later, every group had finished presenting and all heading back to the main centre and sat back down together. Shortly after the judges came on stage and announced the best ideas and presentation shown to them. First and second place were both awarded to the other school!

Shortly after everyone headed back to their coaches and headed back to their schools.

New Careers Statutory Guidance

The latest Careers’ Statutory guidance was published September 2022, and includes a number of new requirements for school careers’ programmes. Most of these requirements are to be met by the end of 2023. Many of the requirements are already met at Beechwood, but we will be working towards developing our provision to ensure that it is outstanding and fully compliant.

The most immediate requirement is for all schools to have a policy for ‘Provider Access’ so that everyone is clear on how and when ‘outside organisations’ will be allowed access to Beechwood students, to promote other educational routes and training opportunities. We have a clear statement of practice and a provision map. 

Our Provider Access Policy and CEIAG (Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance) Policy, can also be found under 'School Information' and then 'Statutory Information'.

Useful links

https://www.gatsbybenchmarks.org.uk/

Gatsby Benchmarks

Compass Careers Benchmarks Results