Work Experience (WEx)
King’s Norton Boys’ School offers Year 10 students the opportunity to perform a week-long work experience placement. In 2024, the week commencing 18th March will be open to students to attend a placement at a business or service provider.
To develop our students’ independence and knowledge of the world of work, students are given the responsibility of organising their own work experience placements. Students who organise their work experience are more likely to engage on that placement, will have a greater sense of ownership of that placement and the placement will be more closely tailored to their interests. Additionally, students will develop their communication skills and develop dialogue with real employers.
In 2023, 78% of the Year 10 cohort successfully secured and attended a work experience placement. A wide range of businesses and service providers took our students on, and we are grateful to those local places of work for giving our students the chance to grow and develop.
We are unable to provide students or parents/carers with a list of businesses that they can try contacting, however, students can visit the Careers Leader to discuss how to find placements and how to make contact with employers. Support will be offered during form times and Personal Development lessons to encourage students to begin the process of searching for, and contacting, businesses. One of the easiest ways to find a place of work is to use a maps search tool (e.g. Google Maps) to search the area close to where you live, to see which businesses operate in that locality. Year 10 students are also able to use public transport to access different areas of the city, opening up more placement options in and around Birmingham. Primary schools, leisure centres, libraries, restaurants, cafés, museums, aquariums, universities, colleges, barbers/hairdressers, charity shops, Birmingham or Solihull city council, car show rooms, vehicle garages, care homes, football clubs, sports clubs, supermarkets, chain retailers and independent retailers are typical examples of placements that successfully accept our students and pass the required health and safety checks.
Students must complete a ‘pre-placement’ form (which can be found at the bottom of this page) and hand it to the Careers Leader by Friday 12th January 2024. All sections of this form must be completed otherwise the form will be returned. If a student fails to hand the pre-placement form to the Careers Leader by this date, it cannot be guaranteed that a health and safety check will be performed in time, resulting in the placement being rejected.
Students are encouraged to be proactive in the weeks leading up to their placement, communicating with the placement, enquiring what clothing they will need to wear, what times they are to work between, what the arrangements for lunch are, etc. Students should also make the placement aware that “Mainframe Engineering Ltd” will be in contact to conduct health and safety checks.
Students and parents should be aware that if a health and safety check of the business is unable to be performed because the employer fails to provide the required documentation, the placement will fail its health and safety check. A placement cannot be authorised by King’s Norton Boys’ School if the health and safety checks are either not completed or the placement is rejected on other grounds. It should also be highlighted that a student cannot attend another student’s placement, even if that placement has already been health and safety checked for the first student, without first submitting a pre-placement form to the Careers Leader. The health and safety may not cover multiple students on a placement and the school has a safeguarding obligation resulting in each individual application needing to be checked.
Students will be communicated with, through their form-tutors, to inform them of whether their placement is successful or has experienced issues with its health and safety checks. This is to keep the onus on the students so that they maintain responsibility for their placement. Parents/carers will not be contacted directly unless they request specific information by emailing the Careers Leader.