St Leonard’s Catholic School in Durham was recently rated Outstanding across all measures by Ofsted. When reporting on what the school does well, inspectors highlighted, alongside other elements of its careers programme, how careers information is seamlessly integrated into the curriculum at the school and that pupils learn in their subjects about a range of careers they could pursue.
Putting careers at the heart of education and leadership is one of five prominent themes that emerged from our recent review of the Gatsby Benchmarks and that informed the resulting updates we’ve made to the framework.
We visited St Leonard’s to learn more about how the school is working to adopt the updated benchmarks and to make good career guidance a whole-staff, whole-institution endeavour. Watch our short film to hear from leaders, teachers and students about the impact the updated Gatsby Benchmarks can have. See how the school, and the trust it is part of, is approaching key refinements, including changes to Benchmarks 1 and 4, putting careers at the heart of the school’s strategic plans, embedding it into staff development and incorporating it into every subject for every year group.
The updated version of the Gatsby Benchmarks was published in late 2024 and is now being embedded into government policy with implementation in schools and colleges set for 2025. You can read more about the updated benchmarks and the evidence and good practice that informed the changes in our report Good Career Guidance: The Next 10 Years. Our Summary of Updates is a quick-read guide to what’s changed, what remains the same and why updates have been made.
We are encouraging all practitioners to take this opportunity to reflect on their careers programme in light of the themes within in the report and how it can best meet the needs of all young people in their care. The Careers & Enterprise Company is providing training and resources to support the implementation of the updated benchmarks.