Work Experience 

All students at the Beacon College have the opportunity to participate in work experience placements throughout their time at college. We aim to give our young people the opportunity to develop their career choices, get a taste of different work, and develop the critical employability skills needed for real working conditions. 

The Beacon College work experience placements:  

• are purposeful and relevant to the young person’s likes, skills, and career aspirations. 

• allow the student to apply skills learned at college.  

• are supervised and managed to ensure the young person obtains a genuine learning experience suited to their needs. 

• have a structured plan for the duration of the placement to enable to student to work towards set targets.  

• have clear roles, responsibilities and expectations for the student and employer. 

• are followed by feedback from the employer which can be incorporated into the student’s CV. 

In Autumn 1 of each academic year, during careers lessons, students will be supported to explore jobs available in the local area and then identify jobs that they would like to try during that academic year. In order to gain a work experience placement, students are expected to submit an application form and participate in a job interview for the role. If successful, students will be supported to access their work experience placement by the Careers and Employability Higher level teaching assistant or a teaching assistant at the college. A teaching assistant will support the students to progress towards set goals or targets at the placement, alongside their own Personal Learning targets, Employability targets or SkillBuilder linked goals. The teaching assistant will also support the employer to develop their understanding of how to support the student successfully. In the future the Beacon College would aim to support local employers to become Disability Confident, in order to improve the likelihood of employers employing young people with learning disabilities. Once the student has completed the work experience placement they will be supported to evaluate and write about the placement for their CV and also practice talking about their placement in preparation for any future interviews.