HOW WE MEASURE AND ASSESS THE IMPACT OF THE CAREERS PROGRAMME

The Mercia Academy works closely with the Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) Careers Hub. This is an external organisation that supports us to develop and strengthen our careers education strategy across the whole school.

At Mercia Academy we use the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks and the Careers Development Institute Framework as a foundation when planning our Careers programme. The effectiveness of our provision is reviewed by the EMCCA and the Careers and Enterprise Company using the Compass Plus Tool. This tool is used by schools and colleges in England to support the analysis and evaluation of careers activity against the eight benchmarks of best practice.

This ensures the development of our careers strategy is ongoing. We will benchmark our schools against the Gatsby Benchmarks once a term.

In line with the recommendations set out in Gatsby Benchmark 1, we as a school plan to review the published information on an annual basis, inviting feedback from key audiences in our stakeholder evaluation group. We will also be holding an annual Future Skills Questionnaire with the scholars during their transition years so that the programme has a youth voice.

Why we evaluate – This careers programme is evaluated every year to assess its efficacy and areas for improvement. Key stakeholders (scholars, parents, teachers and employers) provide feedback on their participation in activities via questionnaires, surveys and focus groups throughout the year. We use the evidence collected to inform continuous improvement of the programme.

How we evaluate – The Mercia Academy have recruited an evaluation stakeholder group, whose purpose it is to provide a well balance view on the quality of the careers offer to scholars. The group is supported by the school’s Enterprise Adviser (Senior Business Volunteer).  They meet once a year to review the evidence collected during the school year and consider their subjective experience and engagement with the programme.

The school careers leader combines their own knowledge, evidence and information with that from the stakeholder group and provides a short report with recommendations to SLT towards the end of the summer term.

What we evaluate
Stakeholder Feedback – We review samples of stakeholder feedback collected using various methods after activities, events and experiences
Implementation – We review what was actually delivered against the programme of planned activity and how well it went.
Impact -We measure key performance indicators linked directly to our vision and desired outcomes for our scholars