Schools and colleges should seek to help young people with SEND to aspire to a wide range of destinations and to realise these aspirations. Providing students with taster opportunities, work experience, mentoring, enterprise education, access to role models and inspiring speakers can all help to achieve this.
The SEND Gatsby Benchmark Toolkit, 2018
Finding employment can be difficult for young people with SEND. They can face their own unique challenges in transitioning from school to further learning and the workplace. The SEND Gatsby Toolkit provides guidance to providers on what good careers provision looks like. It details eight benchmarks, explaining what each is and what it looks like in practice.
The Gatsby Foundation, has published a new resource using the Gatsby Benchamrks with students with SEND. The resource, Good Career Guidance: Perspectives from the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities sector, can be downloaded from their website.
The Careers & Enterprise Company's paper, Transition programmes for young adults with SEND. What works? outlines five key areas which can help to make a transition programme successful including providing encounters with employers, working people and workplaces.
Enfield Borough Council achieved Good in their recent Ofsted report. They run a small supported internship programme for 12 learners with SEND. The report highlighted good careers advice:
Managers make sure that learners and parents receive high-quality impartial careers advice and guidance. A careers adviser who specialises in SEN works frequently with learners to support their progression into employment. Leaders monitor the progression of learners very well.
You'll find more resources related to preparing learners for employment below.
The Department for Education published a Work experience and vocational/technical provision for young people on SEN support: A rapid evidence assessment report in 2018. The aim of the rapid evidence assessment was to identify evidence on the benefits (or otherwise) of work experience for these young people as they prepare to enter paid employment. The report highlights a number of principles of good practice for post-16 providers in finding work experience/placements for young people with less complex special educational needs.
