Guest column: Students learn skills for employers at Ashfield School

In addition to helping with exam pressure, these skills are also highly valued by employers, but they are not always easy to develop without example.With the stress of career-defining decisions and life-shaping examinations looming, it is easy for students and parents to become flustered, creating a negative stigma surrounding choosing a career path.

At schools like Ashfield, staff are tirelessly working to ensure that their students do not contribute towards the 70 per cent of people who are dissatisfied with their profession; after all, who wants to spend their life trapped in a job they hate?

Today’s modern world is an enormous, money-driven and serious place, in which it is far too easy to lose individuality and passion.

However, in a big school like ours, we cater for almost every eventuality, providing a careers advisor, employability skills-based lessons and various educationaltrips.At Ashfield, the ethos is very much one of enabling pupils to achieve their full potential.

One way in which pupils’ eyes are opened to the opportunities surrounding them is through offering days out to universities such as Oxford and the University of Nottingham.

During these trips, students are offered a personal insight into the benefits of higher education and the jobs that it may lead to.

In addition, students are taken to careers events where they can talk to employers about opportunities and apprenticeships.Employability posters have also been introduced around school as a continuous reminder to students of the qualities needed to secure a job which suits them.

These posters were created in order to enable pupils to identify and develop the skills needed to achieve their dream jobs in the future.But work isn’t all about money and expectations.

Our staff are quick to acknowledge that doing a job you are passionate about will provide you with happiness and self-gratification: obligatory for real success. ‘Grown up’ problems like ‘stability worries and expectations’ can sometimes take hostage our imagination, making professions like a doctor or even a musician seem far out of reach.After Ashfield school's recent careers day, however, nothing seems impossible!During this day, the staff of Ashfield School dressed up, displaying their childhood dream jobs and showing off their ambitions, proving that no aspiration is silly.

As a big school, there was no job role forgotten, opening our students’ eyes to a world of future career possibilities.

The staff at Ashfield aspire for their students to achieve their own definition of success…and I’m quite sure they all will!