School Careers Information
Your careers team
Challney High School for Girls has a dedicated and experienced careers team who are here to help guide students through their career and future options:
Careers Leader - Mrs Shana Iqbal - siqbal@challneygirls.luton.sch.uk
Careers Advisor (Luton Borough Council) - Heather Meikle - Heather.Meikle@luton.gov.uk
At Challney Girls, we are committed to providing pupils with high quality Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) so that they have the skills, knowledge and resources to achieve their potential and make informed decisions about their future.
Our extensive careers programme outlines the range of activities that are available for each year group. Careers education is embedded into the curriculum and pupils have access to accurate and up-to-date labour market information. Pupils will develop their understanding of the diverse and changing world of work through encounters with employers and careers learning, and will be able to explain the range of pathways (including academic, vocational and apprenticeships) available through further and higher education literature and events. Our careers provision is aligned to the eight Gatsby Benchmarks, a framework of good careers guidance that are at the heart of the Government’s Careers Strategy.
Our careers leader is responsible for the implementation of the careers programme and supports pupils throughout their Challney careers learning journey.
Please take a look at our Careers Zone which has been designed for pupils, parents and staff, to complement our careers offer. There are a host of useful careers related resources and information.Our commitment to you
Challney High School for Girls seeks to provide a planned programme of careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG) for students in partnership with Luton Borough Council, training and HE providers, businesses, parents, alumni and other external agencies. Details of this programme can be found on the Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 pages, as well as an overview of our careers provision over the academic year.
The school’s ambition is to ensure that all students leave equipped with the relevant skills and knowledge required to successfully support their entry to the next stage of their development. To this end, the school’s CEIAG programme has three main aims:
- Self-Development – enabling students to understand themselves, their strengths and the influences on them, acquiring the core competencies and skills necessary to enable them to access a range of opportunities
- Career Exploration – investigation of opportunities in learning and work, understanding the changing world of work and labour market information
- Career Management – developing skills enabling them to make and adjust plans and to manage change and transitions.
Our CEIAG and Employability Policy can be found here which provides further information including our provider access statement which can be found here. You can also see our Experiences in the Workplace Policy by clicking here.
Our entitlement statement outlines what students and parents can expect to receive during their time with Challney High School for Girls.
Please click here to see our Quality in Careers Standard reaccreditation certificate.
Pupils
It can be difficult to know where to start in making decisions about your future. However, career planning and exploration is important as it allows you to:
- Make informed choices
- Identify goals and produce an action plan of how you will achieve these
- Develop your skills and experience that are relevant to your area of interest – this in turn will enhance your employability as you can demonstrate that you are motivated, proactive, and well prepared for the further studies/employment
You may or may not know what you want to do in the future, but a good place to start is to think about:
- What are my strengths and what would those around me say I am good at?
- What do I enjoy doing? This can be in school, through extra-curricular or in your spare time
- What opportunities are available now and in the future? Do I know what jobs are declining/increasing?
- What motivates me?
Please see a list of resources at the bottom of the page, that you can use to explore your career ideas and consider the choices and pathways available
Parents
With an array of career information and an ever changing labour market, it can be difficult to know where to look and what to read when it comes to understanding what is available to your child. The choices available to your child today are likely to be very different to what was available to you at school. However, parental guidance has always played a significant role in a pupils decision making and so it is important you have access to relevant and up-to-date information. Our careers programme sets out the range of opportunities available, which aims to develop pupils' sense of self, knowledge of the working world and to raise ambitious aspirations for their future.
For more advice and careers information, specifically for parents, please visit:
Parental Guidance
Parental Guidance offers clear, concise and impartial information on the post 16 choices available. Led by experienced careers writers and advisers, this website is a helpful guide to parents, with useful articles, news and updates, from preparing applications and interviews to looking at labour market information
If you have any careers related questions concerning your child, please contact Mrs Shana Iqbal (careers lead) on 01582 571427 or email siqbal@challneygirls.luton.sch.uk
Employers
To increase pupils’ awareness of the world of work and the knowledge and skills required, we endeavour to provide a range of employers and careers related opportunities to each of our pupils. Below are some examples of careers activities an employer could get involved with:
- Offer a work experience placement through your organisation to one or a group of our year 10 pupils
- Take part in our Business, Education, Skills and Partnership (BESP) events where pupils ask you questions about your job role, the organisation you work for and your careers journey
- Provide a careers insight talk to pupils about your career path or sector in which you work in
- If you work in a growing industry, share with pupils the upcoming opportunities that they may be available to them
- Deliver/support a subject lesson specific to the industry in which you work in; bringing real-life context to a particular subject area or topic
- Offer a mentoring programme to enhance pupils employability skills
- Deliver an activity/skills based workshop i.e. CV writing, interview preparation, team building task
If you are a business or an employer and would like to support our pupils in any of the above activities and build a mutually beneficial relationship with the school, please get in touch with our If you have any careers related questions concerning your child, please contact Mrs Shana Iqbal (careers leader) on 01582 571427 or email siqbal@challneygirls.luton.sch.uk
Staff
There are many ways in which staff can promote careers education and link curriculum learning:
- Schemes of work and lesson plans show how career relevant learning is embedded into your teaching
- Motivate and encourage pupils to be ambitious and to reach their full potential
- Talk to pupils about the careers related to your subject
- Provide pupils with impartial, up-to-date and accurate advice on the pathways available and the skills in demand from employers
- Share careers related resources with pupils such as labour market information, local initiatives/opportunities and useful website links
- Get involved with nationally recognised events such as National Apprenticeship Week and National Careers Week
- Organise extracurricular activities to develop and enhance pupils’ core competencies such as teamwork, communication and leadership
- Encourage pupils to take onus of their careers learning journey through independent research tasks
- Inform pupils of contacts within school that can support them in their decision making, particularly at key transitional stages
- Organise employer visits and industry trips to promote pupils understanding of the world of work
- Invite employers in to give a careers talk, share expertise or provide real life context to a topic
Useful websites
https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/
https://www.careershubluton.co.uk/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/careers
https://amazingapprenticeships.com/
Careers information at Challney High School for Girls is reviewed annually.