Is your Year 12 doing work experience this holiday?

[SupportManager]

My DD told me today that a lot of her friends are doing work experience this week. She never mentioned this was happening. I asked what they were doing. Shrug, 'don't really know, A's doing something in an office, B's doing something at his dad's place'. .. She has applied to work in a school for work experience, but obviously the timing is difficult because schools are only open when she too is at school. But I didn't know the school were arranging other things and i'm annoyed that she could have tried something . Are other people's schools arranging things, or is it up to the student to ask and arrange it themselves?

[TantrumsAndBalloons]

My daughter will be working full time, it's not work experience though it's her part time job.
Most of her friends have summer jobs.

I would have thought at 17 if they want work experience they arrange it themselves.

[Rosieposy4]

Neither my school or either of my dcs' schools arrange work exp for this week. My y12 is off camping all week ( i had been hoping revision , hmm maybe they have been talking physics in the tent at night)
Def think it is up to the student to arrange something if they wanted to this week.

[jeanne16]

I think it is very useful to do work experience in Y 12 in something related to what they want to do at uni, if at all possible. Then they can discuss this in their UCAS personal statement.

[Leeds2]

At DD's school, they encourage them to arrange something after the end of GCSEs, so when they have the long summer off. No one checks that this has been done though, and although recommended it is optional and school certainly don't help arrange it. DD didn't do w/e then, but will be doing 4 days this summer instead. One of her friends did three separate week long placements last summer, which I thought was impressive!

[EvilTwins]

Yr 12s at my school are doing a week next term. They do arrange it themselves though - gone are the days where schools arrange work experience! I think the idea where I teach is that they do something related to their ucas/career interests. Otherwise they'd just take on more shifts at their normal workplaces.

[Thisisthelasttime]

Ds arranged w/e himself. Not really what he wants but he's enjoying it. I'm delighted as he can be lazy .

[GentlyBenevolent]

DD1's school WE week is next week (i.e. not in half term). The kids have to organise it themselves, totally, but then it gets signed off by the school (and insurance and stuff like that is checked). DD1 isn't doing it next week though, she got an offer to good to refuse for a week in March and the school are allowing her to do her WE that week (she'll have to catch up on the work she misses in lessons) and she will be in school on her own (actually theres a few others who have made similar arrangements) next week, which will be great because while she will have some set work, she will mainly be living in the practice rooms.

It is a bit crap overall though because as with so much else, it's completely not geared towards what she will be doing in her working life - she could have done things like shadowing musicians (we know several) for the week but that didn't meet the school's requirements, whereas photocopying in an office or working in a shop would- despite having no relevance to her future plans...

[MrsBartlet]

Dd did a couple of days work experience when she finished Y12 (she would have done more but as she was under 18 the place she went to would not allow her to do more). She organised it herself, although it came from a very useful contact in school. It was a great experience and now she has the contacts there, she is hoping to get to do more work experience with them this summer as she will be over 18 then and it is directly connected to what she wants to do for a career.

Does your dd know what she wants to do career-wise? Perhaps you could encourage her to sort something out for the summer holidays.

[Essexmum69]

No work experience organised by DS school. He has his AS mocks when he goes back to school on Monday so has spent most of half term with a pile of revision notes.