St Bartholomew's School pupils looking to future with exciting careers fair advice

Hundreds of pupils at a Newbury school have been given the opportunity to explore their future careers, writes Max Carter Keall.

A number of local businesses joined St Bartholomew’s school’s annual KS3 Careers Fair, which was held at the school on Friday, December 9.

More than 800 pupils in Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 got the chance to speak to various organisations and explore over 50 potential job roles for the future.

Some of the biggest names in local business were there, including the Army, the Corn Exchange, CyberCrowd, Jones Robinson, Kerridge CS, the NHS, the RAF and Vodafone.

Denise Seward, head of business and economics and careers lead at St Bart's said: “The Careers Fair is a key event in our wider careers education programme, which enables students to encounter employers and employees in person and ask questions they may have.”

The school liaised with the wider school community, including alumni, staff, parents, governors and local organisations to arrange for representatives from different career fields to support the initiative.

The students were given a specially designed booklet to record their conversations and following this spent time in tutor sessions reviewing all they had learned and their experiences.

Year 7 pupil Abigail Marshall said: “It was very interesting to find out about jobs that I didn't know existed and also to get to know about how many of the jobs are linked to helping people in the community.

"I also enjoyed the fact we got some free goodies like key-rings and pens with companies’ names on them!”