Careers Education Information, Advice & Guidance

What is CEIAG?

CEIAG stands for Careers Education, Information, Advice, and Guidance. All people, at various stages of their life, receive some sort of support in terms of their career development; the kind of support needed is defined by their needs and preferences.

• Careers Education = taught lessons on various aspects of career development.
• Careers Information = news and data about courses, jobs, career paths and opportunities.
• Careers Advice = suggestions and opinions relating to careers from either an informed or informal source.
• Careers Guidance = more in-depth support, often helping recipients understand things about themselves or the world around them that otherwise they would not perceive.

If there is anything you need to know about careers at Cedar Mount please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Breen on 0161 248 7009, the main contact for parents and students wanting more information about CEIAG and is happy to talk to employers who want to set up partnerships with CMA.

Here at Cedar Mount Academy, we take the future employability and career development of our pupils extremely seriously. Our CEIAG programme is delivered across school in form time and PSHE lessons, through our visiting CIAG Adviser, assemblies, trips to Universities and workplaces.   We have dedicated independent and impartial advisers in school every week  and they provide 1:1 guidance and promote careers-related learning.

As part of our commitment to informing our pupils of the full range of learning and training pathways on offer to them, we will consider requests from approved training, apprenticeship and vocational education providers to speak to pupils. This complies with the school’s legal obligations under Section 42B of the Education Act 1997 (the ‘Baker Clause’).

We also proactively seek to build relationships with such partners as we plan our careers information and guidance throughout the school year to ensure that providers have opportunities to speak to pupils and their parents in Years 7-11, to offer information on vocational, technical and apprenticeship qualifications and pathways.

How we assess and measure the impact of our careers programme

Cedar Mount Academy works closely with Careers Connect. This is an external organisation that supports schools to ensure they are following the DFE’s  Careers Strategy. The following information is an extract taken from this guidance.

“The careers strategy sets out that every school and academy providing secondary education should use the Gatsby Charitable Foundation’s Benchmarks to develop and improve their careers provision. This statutory guidance has been restructured around the Benchmarks with information on what schools need to do to meet each one. The Gatsby Benchmarks are not a statutory framework but by adopting them, schools can be confident that they are fulfilling their legal duties: the existing duties to secure independent careers guidance and provide opportunities to a range of providers to inform pupils about technical education qualifications or apprenticeships and the new duty to publish information about the careers programme on the school website.”

As an education establishment we ensure we use the 8 Gatsby Benchmarks as a foundation when planning our Careers Strategy. The effectiveness of our provision is inspected and audited by the Careers and Enterprise Company using the Compass Careers Benchmark 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 (known as the Gatsby Benchmarks). The Careers and Enterprise Company coordinate the Audit deadlines.