Careers Day at The Mandeville School, Aylesbury

On the last day of term, The Mandeville School held a Careers Day full of aspiration building activities for the entire school. Aims of the ambitious day included focusing students on their future careers, enabling them to self-reflect, plan their future goals, challenge some of their career misconceptions and most importantly enjoy experiencing something new.

Year 7s took on the role of engineers whilst constructing lightweight but durable tunnels from paper straws. Built to withstand huge pressures to enable a train to pass safely through, there was a great deal to consider before constructing. Challenging the preconception that engineers are only males, two female engineers led the session showing that it is not just for boys. With the overall winning design produced by a team of four determined girls!

Buckingham University led an apprentice style showdown with year 8s – apprentices styled, designed, manufactured, branded and marketed their own soap to take to ‘Lord Sugar’. Some of their innovative designs included start was based soap and one modelled on dolphins! Students showed outstanding engagement and dazzled their audience with their presentations. 

Year 9 had a variety of careers-based sessions from money management to food and nutrition careers based activity. Not only this, but they were able to participate in a number of STEM-related sessions as this is a huge growth area not only locally but nationally and globally too!

Students also got to experience the ‘Simulate Your Future’ careers simulator van – an immersive experience in which they followed the journey of a patient and experienced what it would be like to have a hospital as their workplace. This was only the third time students have had the chance to experience this anywhere in the country! In contrast to this, year 10s were able to spend an hour inside the pop-up planetarium where they learnt about events on the moon and the careers involved in getting them there. 

Student feedback for the day was overwhelmingly positive with Bucks Skills Hub and Study Higher jointly organising the 30+ visitors that visited the school and helped make the event such a success.

Further information about Study Higher is available at:  www.studyhigher.ac.uk