What is CEIAG?
CEIAG (Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance) is designed to prepare students for life in modern Britain and is a means of developing a young person’s knowledge, understanding, confidence and skills that they need to make well- informed, thought through choices and plans that enable them to progress into further learning and work. CEIAG contributes to raising pupil achievement, helps students focus on their longer-term career ambitions and ensures opportunity for all.
Find your Future, OxLEP’s online careers platform for young people, schools/colleges and parents/carers is now available to access. Students can find information and inspiration about their future under one ‘virtual roof’:
- Explore the different employment sectors available in Oxfordshire
- Connect with local and national employers
- Research post 16/18 options including colleges, apprenticeships, T Levels and universities
- Discover tips on the skills employers are looking for, CV writing and how to succeed at interviews.
Apprenticeship Guide and Vacancies
The Apprenticeship Guide | Home : Your online guide to apprenticeship careers and job opportunities
The Parents’ Guide to What Next – 2022-2023
What is CEIAG at The Bicester School?
At The Bicester School we provide a comprehensive CEIAG programme to students in every year group and of all abilities and this includes aspects of work related learning, enterprise education and option choices. Views are sought from all stakeholders and the programme evolves year on year to consider the needs of students and the local, national and global jobs market. The programme is designed to meet the needs of all students at the academy. It is differentiated and personalised to ensure progression through activities that are appropriate to students’ stages of career learning, planning and development. The programme aims to offer career sessions, career guidance activities (group work and individual interviews), information and research, work-related learning, and other outside agency intervention.
There is a wide reaching and inclusive careers programme that provides the widest range of opportunities and experiences for all students. The complimentary careers curriculum spans a student’s journey from Year 7 entry to Year 11 destinations, and includes:
- Organised events and experiences that give students the opportunity to explore different job sectors and develop key work readiness skills.
- Personal guidance– professional, impartial guidance and support at key learning and decision points to assist with making those decisions
- Career advice and information –CV writing, interview advice and mock interviews as well as other tips and tricks.
- Support – Encourage the thirst for learning to provide the best start to the careers journey possible.
Parents’ pack
Post 16 Future Plan Opportunities
The Bicester School – Careers directory
The Bicester School Alumni LinkedIn
Pure Potential – Personal Statements
Success at school – Parents Ebook
Please follow the link to Success at School’s careers guide which is packed full of advice to help you steer your child through the confusing world of careers choices. They are publishing the guide next academic year, but you can get a free preview now.
Should you wish to contact to the careers team for further support or to offer support to our careers initiatives,
please contact the relevant individual listed below:
General Careers Enquires: ceiag@thebicesterschool.org.uk
Senior Leader Designated Career Lead: Gareth.allum@thebiceterschool.org.uk
Level 6 Qualified Careers Adviser: Alison.rosier@thebicesterschool.org.uk
Latest News
The University of Buckingham teachers ran a computing workshop at TBS on Wednesday 13 July, looking at image processing with some of our Year 7 and Year 8 students this week. We even had a special visit from Spot the Robot! 🤖
Read Louis Jones (Y8) report here:
What we did
In the workshop, we learnt how to edit photographs and remove noise. To do this we used two mathematical processes: The Mean and The Median.
To blur an image, we took the average value out of the colours (each colour is assigned a number in accordance with its shade). From there, we then averaged the averages to find an even less refined value. This is then the colour for that pixel. If this process is repeated, then the blurring will be even stronger.
What I learnt
In this workshop, I learnt how to apply simple mathematical processes to an everyday life problem. This workshop showed me that nearly anything can be applied to any problem.
Other
I enjoyed the workshop because I thought it was well structured and well-presented because I learnt a lot of applicable skills. We were also visited by a robotic dog: Boston Dynamics’ Spot. This workshop made me feel inclined to take IT at university and consider Buckingham University as a potential future university.
On the 30th June two representatives from Oxford PV, Dr. Miranda and Dr. Bucknell, came to our school to deliver a future-careers STEM session. Oxford PV are an Oxford University spin-out company which designs and manufactures perovskite solar cells.
They started off by introducing themselves and their journey from A-levels all the way to their current jobs. There was then a quick interactive session where assessed our knowledge of their field of work – renewable energy.
The specialists educated us about climate change and how we can help prevent it from getting any worse in the future. I found it extremely useful because it puts the reality into perspective as to how quickly we’re destroying our planet and what will happen if we don’t act now.
After this, we learnt about the different jobs within the STEM sector that we could aspire to do and the paths we should ideally take for best chance of success. They then finished off with questions and answer session to recap the lesson and answer our questions on the renewable energy industry. They were incredibly accommodating and friendly which made the whole class comfortable and grateful for their visit.
Nicole Wood (Year 9)
It has been a busy year and in particular a busy final term for careers support and guidance at The Bicester School. Students have had the opportunity to experience a growing number of career-based initiatives and guidance, ranging from in school experiences during Maths week, Apprenticeships, and other post16 options, as well as external visits to one of our local community partners Viridor ERF, Ardley.
The Year 8 Go4Set team made the long trip up to Stoke to present their STEM project and performed extremely well. Judges complemented the students for their innovative ideas and commented that they felt that their concept of reusing wood and plastic bottles to create furniture was the idea with the most amount of potential. A huge congratulations to the students and thank you to Ms McKaig for working on this over the past few months.
Our Year 10 cohort continued their career programme with visits to Viridor and their two Future Days events. These aimed to prepare students for the world of work, including cover letter writing and interview preparation. These activities culminated in students taking part in formal mock interviews with a range of local employers from industry who volunteered their time on the day. Sarah Jaycock (High Spec Composites), our school Enterprise Adviser, was also in attendance after her recent success in winning the Oxfordshire Business Awards Young Business Person of the Year award to support students.
Sarah also went with our Year 12 students to The Cooper School in order to further support the Year 12 employability skills day which allowed students to take part in a partnership enterprise event arranged by the school, The Cooper School and The Technology Studio. This event followed on from the previous week’s Future Plans day in which students took part in seminar sessions lead by a few local and national companies ranging from social media, accountancy and the NHS.
A team of our Year 12 students took part in the Bicester Village Enterprise challenge which resulted in the final presentations being judged at Bicester Village. Another strong performance resulted in the team making the final but narrowly missing out on the win but receiving plaudits for their preparation and presentation of their idea. The team were subsequently invited to take part in a formal consultation regarding the next phase of regeneration within Bicester town.
On Friday 22nd November students in year 9 had the opportunity to attend the annually run WorldSkills career event held at NEC in Birmingham. Three busloads of students visited the event and spent the day discovering and immersing themselves within a plethora of different jobs, career paths and industries. With such a considerable variety of jobs and skills on show students had the chance to watch life demonstrations of potential careers within computing, engineering, body art and the automotive industry to mention but a few. With the use of a mobile app made available for free by the event organisers, students were able to plan their route around the event so the relevant career paths and interests were showcased to them. We hope that by attending this event that students will have perhaps discovered a new career path that we can look to support and develop as students begin to consider their year 10 options next year.
The school held its first Human Library event on Thursday 14th November in which year 8 students were visited by a number of local employers, entrepreneurs and inspirational speakers from a number of backgrounds and career paths. Students moved around the school hall in a carousel fashion getting to spend time with each of the visitors and were able to find out about their job roles, key employability skills and had the opportunity to ask any questions. The event was a real success with many students wanting to do it again as they begun to open their eyes and minds to numerous careers that could await them. I would like to thank the school’s Enterprise Advisor Sarah Jaycock of High Spec Composites for her help organising this fantastic event.
Toyota UK visited the school to deliver a career session to Post 16 students on Wednesday 13th November. Staff from the manufacturer spoke to students about their different job roles and pathways within the automotive industry. Not only did they provide career support, but they also gave a very detailed insight to the workings of a very large multi-national employer and spoke at great length about the need for our students to develop not only their academic performance but also their soft skills; negotiation, empathy and motivation to mention but a few. Though it did not stop there, students, and surprised staff, were also treated to seeing a film crew attend the event to record the event which we hope to have available soon. I would like to thank Melissa Wright of InGear for her helping organising this event.