...to think there is a flaw in the system for school work experience placements?

Sounds like your vet just doesn't want to help out - my vet had a work experience in there just a couple of weeks ago. Get her/him to volunteer at a boarding kennels or wildlife rescue centre instead as these organisations generally need volunteers anyway.

It is a bit annoying but it’s not really the schools fault.

She's not missing much. I did my work experience at the vet, and there was little I could actually do. I could observe operations and I had a day out with one of the vets, visiting farms (I was a farm girl anyway, so not really a new experience.) I couldn't even do much cleaning, because the drugs shelves etc were restricted. And that was nearly 40 years ago, when insurance and so on were less of a consideration than they are now.

It is much easier for those children who already have friends or family members in desired profession, which is unfair. I did think with my kids that school could have been a bit more proactive than just telling them to sort it out themselves, mine were at the tail end of COVID so it was extra tricky and they ended up doing work experience online. Our local hospital has a work experience contact in the admin side to try to offer places more fairly than to children of existing staff.

Do you have an independent pet shop who would take her? Generally, it's getting the idea of a) having to organise your placement yourself, b) working business hours, c) getting yourself to your placement that are the key skills. It fits in nicely ahead of GCSEs when you need to be prompt on time for exams and manage your own revision.

We're dealing with exactly the same at the moment. Dd 14 wants to be a mental health nurse. School would prefer her to be in a placement that mirrors what she wants to do but she can't be in an NHS work experience placement because of patient confidentiality, which I understand.
We're trying primary schools of younger siblings and an SEN school one of our friends is a teacher at to see if we can find something but we're not hopeful.
Her boyfriends mum runs a cafe and she may well end up there at this rate (which is fine of course and still some experience but its annoying it has to be this hard)

I think school work experience placements are more about learning about the working environment in general rather than getting a foot in the door to a particular profession.

DS1 did his in a primary school, and he has no interest in teaching, but it was good for him being around adults at work and being given a little responsibility (setting up activities, helping with some admin work, listening to children read etc).

It is really difficult. My sister is a medical student and she only got work experience because my mum was a nurse in a gp practice, even then there was a lot of reluctance to do it. My sister said a lot of people in her course don’t have work experience, and they used things like working in care roles as examples instead.

Is it possible for your daughter to get in touch with a dog walker or even a local farmer and do some stuff on a voluntary basis. It may not be the formal work experience for the school but will help for a personal statement.

Yes, I completely agree (currently have a DD in year 10) I work for a gov dept and we won't take anyone under 16, eg anyone under A level age. In addition to that so many professionals now work part/all of the week at home. My daughter is interested in architecture but we couldn't find a local architect with proper offices local to us, also tried graphic designers but same issue so has ended up organising something completely unrelated to her ambitions. I think work experience has ceased to be at all useful.

I do think it's silly having work experience at 14. Ours was at 16 and that was hard enough. There are so many things they just can't do and most of them end up in their old primary schools or at their parents jobs.

Quite honestly, it's not that valuable as experience anyway. Apart from the enjoyment of it. If she knows that's what she wants to do then a week in Vets for Pets isn't going to change that.

That's annoying, I worked in a health care profession and found I was allowed to do work experience from 16 which makes much more sense.

Would you really expect a teen to shadow a vet, doctor or nurse though?? Surely not. Work experience is to experience the world of work, not specifically to experience the final destination career aspiration of each individual child.

DFriend is a vet; I’ve know her since school. She did work experience at a local animal shelter on a Sunday morning before vet school, for a few years while at school.

One week of school work experience is pretty meaningless anyway.

Could she not try somewhere animal ajacent work placement like at a wildlife charity offices?