University / Careers
Aspire Week 2023
The Swanlea School values, of Respect, Aspire and Achieve are reflected through a wide-range of activities for students. This includes one week, which is dedicated to cultivating aspirations and informing students about future opportunities within the world of work and education.
Assemblies take place every day during Aspire week, from 8.45am – 9am led by inspirational guest speakers, including former students who deliver presentations to encourage and inform students about what they can aspire to be in the future.
Careers Education
Our school has an embedded careers programme that aims to inform and encourage pupils to consider their career options and take steps to understand their choices and pathways.
We provide statutory independent careers guidance to pupils from year 7 onwards. Our programme has been developed to meet the expectations outlined in the Gatsby benchmarks:
1. A stable careers programme with a careers leader
2. Learning from career and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each pupil
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experience of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance
Our programme doesn’t show bias towards any particular career path and promotes a full range of technical and academic options for pupils. Our full Careers Education Policy (CEIAG) can be found here:
Careers-Policy-CEIAG-Programme
Further useful links for students, parents, and teachers:
- Start Careers Information for London
- UCAS
- Find an apprenticeship
- Not Going to University Opportunities
- Tower Hamlets Young WorkPath
- My Skills My Future
- My Learning My Future
- Tower Hamlets volunteering opportunities
- Subject careers posters
Additional useful links for parents:
Additional useful links for teachers:
Aspire Week 2023
We hosted our first Aspire Week in school since the pandemic started. A core value at Swanlea School is to “aspire to be the best in all that we do.” Aspire Week aims to reflect this value by dedicating time to providing students with information on a range of future career opportunities and educational pathways. Aspire Week 2023 began on the Monday 6th March. There were over 15 different events and activities over the week which included workshops, assemblies, encounters with employers, external visits and virtual work experience.
In lessons, students were provided with careers information to increase awareness of subject specific career prospects. Swanlea School hosted a highly anticipated careers fair, with over 30 different organisations and over 600 student participants.
On Monday 6th March MP Rushanara Ali spent time with A Level politics students. Year 7 pupils met with representatives from Deloitte who spoke to them about household budgeting.
Virtual work experience took place on Tuesday 7th March and Year 9 students met with representatives from the National Grid. Our Year 10 students also received advice and guidance about qualifications that are available at the national college for digital skills, Ada College.
On Wednesday 9th March, Year 8 students took part in a Skills to Success workshop with The Switch, education charity that helps young people fulfil their potential and Ada college returned with more information about digital qualifications.
Numerous organisations, ranging from the London Fire Brigade, to J.P Morgan and from SOAS University to UCL attended the highlight of our Aspire Week, our careers fair on Thursday 10th March. Students in every year group were able to engage in the activities that took place both in and outside school.
There was a trip to the Old Bailey on Friday 11th March. The second-largest professional services network in the world, Pricewaterhouse Coopers visited Swanlea School on the last day of Aspire Week and Accenture Careers came to speak to our Year 10 students.
We look forward to making Aspire Week 2024 an even better experience to inspire students regarding their future studies and career paths.