Churcher’s College hosts ‘Careers Bites’ seminar on apprenticeships

Churcher’s College Careers & Higher Education team this week hosted the first ‘Careers Bites’ presentation of the term on apprenticeships.

Thirty pupils and parents attended the session where a wealth of information was shared by six external representatives:

Kim Anderson, from Unifrog, introduced the subject of apprenticeships highlighting the huge range of opportunities available in this rapidly expanding field and the excellent apprenticeship search tool on Unifrog.

Claire Sutton, from ASK Apprenticeships, expanded on this providing information about the range and levels of apprenticeships from School Leaver programmes to Degree Apprenticeships with companies such as KPMG.

Sally Ann Armstrong, from the Royal Navy, who concentrated on the wealth of apprenticeships available through the Armed Forces.

Two recent former Churcher’s pupils (Old Churcherians) Jake Smyth and Harry Smyth shared their alternative routes to university on leaving Churcher’s: Harry joined Rolls Royce last summer on their Engineering Apprenticeship Scheme and Jake has just completed his Commercial Pilot's Licence and had his first airline job interview with British Airways this week.

The boys' mum, Emma Smyth, also joined the seminar to give a parent’s perspective on being open-minded about routes other than university and her experiences supporting the boys in to their chosen careers.

James Neave, Churcher’s College Sixth Form pupil, said: “The seminar was very interesting and I am now going to look into Degree apprenticeships further. The thought of earning and no uni debt is very appealing.”

Dr Kirsty Verney, Head of Careers and Higher Education at Churcher’s College, said: “The Q&A session after the talks was very popular with the speakers being asked lots of questions by both pupils and parents. Pupils seemed to particularly enjoy the opportunity to speak to Jake and Harry about their experiences and thoughts on the routes they have taken. Certainly everyone who attended knew an awful lot more about Apprenticeships by the end of the session - thank you so much to all our speakers and well done to all those pupils who attended for taking such an active interest.”

The Careers and Higher Education team at Churcher’s College supports pupils throughout their time at the school in academic decisions and outcomes, applications, work experience, university courses, UCAS applications and much more. Within the programme ‘Careers Bites’ is a seminar series which showcases a wide variety of topics relating to careers decisions relevant to the students.