Year 10 spent much of the week commencing 4^th July engaged in Careers Education activities. We kick-started the week with a presentation about apprenticeships as an option for future education, followed by each student in the year group involved in an interview activity with employers before learning about their professions through a careers speed-dating activity. 

Year 10 then moved on to develop their enterprise skills and design a product using old car tyres. Their presentation skills (duly fed back on by Mrs Wrycraft from the English department) were tested on Wednesday morning as groups shared their product proposals with the rest of the cohort in our new school hall.  Wednesday also gave opportunity to learn about university life and opportunities from both SOAS and Reading universities and everybody was most grateful to the professionals who travelled to BGS to talk first-hand to year 10.  If that was not enough to widen our students' knowledge, we then embarked on a carousel activity involving six further professionals who each spoke to groups of 30 students for 15 minutes. 

It was fantastic to welcome Squadron Leader Julie Fell of the RAF to BGS once again and host members of the NHS alongside four BGS alumni who wanted to come back and talk to current students about their roles in business having once been in the position of the current year 10. Get ready year 10 - you could be speaking to future generations of BGS students in about 10 years time!

To end the week, Thursday 7^th July saw our first ever 'Take your child to work day' with the vast majority of year 10 students seeing first-hand what their parents do at work. A group of students also travelled to the UK corporate offices of Henkel Ltd with Mr Lennon, Mrs Griffiths, Miss Adby and Mrs Swadling to learn about Henkel, opportunities for employment, their products and to get an insight into a real-life office and working environment.  We were treated to a site tour, laboratory visit for some, presentations from a cross-section of employees and a task which each student undertook before being given feedback on what they had done. 

We also learnt about how businesses manage dress-code arrangements and inclusivity and how our students might seek employment opportunities overseas in the future, in addition to why superglue doesn't stick to the inside of the bottle, that broken glass can be stuck back together and how to glue large bricks together whilst soaking wet!  BGS is most grateful to Mrs Roos, our voluntary Enterprise Advisor from Henkel, for the time she spent in planning this day and enabling a large group of school students to descend on Henkel's UK headquarters.

We hope that this week's activities have provided much thought and aspirations for our students and we look forward to seeing what you do in the future!

Mr Lennon