At Devizes School, we want to give our students a taste of the wider world beyond our curriculum. We don’t think there’s any better way of doing this than by hearing from people with different and valuable experiences our students can learn from.

Last week, we held an off-timetable week for our students. Alongside hosting a huge careers event, where pupils practised interviews with real business people from all over the country via Teams, we also hosted three fantastic and insightful guests who spoke to different year groups Firstly, Alex Beck, employee at the Bank of England gave an enlightening talk to year 8s about his experience getting to this point in his career, and the realities of his job at the Bank of England. It was a great insight into a world of work that few of us have an inside view on.

Year 10 were treated to a talk from Corporal Greenan, who spoke about what it’s like to have a career in the Royal Army. Situated just by the Salisbury Plain, Devizes School has a close connection with the army, and it was great to hear first-hand from someone with a rich career in the army.

It’s always fascinating to hear from someone at the centre of an important time in history. Our sixth formers got to do exactly this as we were visited by Johnny Cameron, who spoke about his experiences in the banking sector as the head of RBS when it collapsed in 2008 as a consequence of the banking credit crunch. We’d like to thank Speakers4Schools for providing us with the opportunity to invite Mr Cameron who gave an exceptional talk.

Finally, students from year 9 also enjoyed participating in an online project called hi tech horizons thinking about careers in the tech sector with outside experts through teams.

Giving our students insights into the world of work is an important part of our job as educators. If you’ve got a taste of what a job or a career might be like, it can give you the extra bit of motivation and confidence to start taking the steps towards realising that goal.

If you’re looking for careers advice for your child, or you're a student and you have questions, visit our career advice page.