Year 10 ACE Day - Careers day

On Tuesday 30 January the Senior School and Sixth Form hosted an Academic Curriculum Enrichment (ACE) day. The day provides an opportunity to visit different exhibitions, places of interest, and to learn in different environments. Each year group embarked on an activity unique to their studies and year group.

Year 10 students focused on the future, concentrating on employability skills and financial awareness at a workshop run by Bright Futures. The girls were divided into teams of five and were asked to complete a variety of activities throughout the day. Their first task was the ‘moneybox challenge’, which involved a series of mini challenges about money and finances. The girls were required to complete each task simultaneously, so it was essential to divide the tasks up amongst each team to achieve maximum effectiveness.

The girls then undertook a recruitment exercise, looking at non-verbal communication skills. Each of the teams had to shortlist two candidates to interview, out of four applications, for a catering assistant role, explaining why they had made their selection; this gave the girls an insight into the type of errors people make with written job applications. The girls were all quite shocked to learn that online recruitment agencies often only spend six seconds scanning applications before deciding whether to continue to read or discard them.

Next came the ‘rollercoaster design competition’, where the teams were tasked to design the longest ride for a marble. The exercise aimed to test effective team work, working to deadlines, and the importance of following instructions – for instance, they were told that it was essential to keep testing their rollercoaster every time they added a new section, and those who did were ultimately the more successful!

The last activity of the day was the ‘art of negotiation’ exercise, in which the girls had to approach members of staff, shake their hands, make eye contact, introduce themselves with small talk, and then try to negotiate a deal for the items they wanted to buy. Some were more successful than others but it was another valuable learning experience.