Careers Advice

 Careers at Ryde School:

 
Mr J MacArthur (Head of Careers) jrpm@rydeschool.org.uk
 
Mr S Baxter (Head of Sixth Form)   srb@rydeschool.org.uk
 
 
It is the role of the Careers Department to co-ordinate the appropriate guidance to pupils across the School from Year 9 to the Upper Sixth. Our key is to focus on a number of well defined steps, to ensure that all pupils and parents are fully aware of the decisions which need to be made – and to give regular access for individual advice and encouragement to help with these decisions.
 
  • In Year 9 we are involved in looking ahead with the pupils to the choices which have to be made regarding their GCSE courses. At Ryde School, the subject range is designed to keep open a very wide variety of possible subsequent career decisions at this stage.  
  • In the late Summer Term of Year 10 pupils will take the Independent Schools Career Organisation’s Futurewise Profile: this produces a thorough and objective report on each individual pupil’s ability and aptitudes, with a range of “career suggestions’, which we send to parents. 
  • Each pupil will have an interview, with professionally qualified ISCO staff to explain and expand upon their individual Profile’s results to help them produce an action plan for their Sixth Form GCE choices and their education or training beyond Ryde. These options are the focus of the Sixth Form Open Evening and a subsequent Parents’ Evening in Year 11.  
  • See: http://www.myfuturewise.org.uk/about_futurewise/what_is_futurewise.aspx
  • Early in the Lower Sixth, with GCSE’s behind them and the new challenges of the AS / A Level courses, we focus on the routes to Further and Higher Education.
  • We use individual interviews to evolve the most appropriate applications, including opportunities for a Gap Year.  This process continues into the Upper Sixth, with much stress on one-to-one individual advice and encouragement, the UCAS Fair in Portsmouth, Open Days, “mock entrance interviews’ when appropriate and support up to and after the A Level Results day in mid-August
 
Mr MacArthur can advise on how best these may be used.