BBC Bitesize Tour visits Fairfield

Fairfield High School was super excited to host the BBC Bitesize Careers Tour to showcase a range of roles. Miss Thomas, Fairfield’s Careers Lead, received the call to say the Careers Tour was in Bristol for the week and she instantly knew it would be awesome if they could spend the day with our cohort of students and boy, did they not disappoint!

Approximately 800 students from Years 7 to 10 participated in the interactive event which was presented by BBC presenter Jasmine Takhar (BBC Asian Network) who interviewed three guest panellists from range of industry sectors:

• The first was an Assistant Producer for the BBC, who had worked alongside many famous faces whilst working on programmes such as Children in Need, Question of Sport and Eurovision
• The second was from BBC Bristol, who spoke to our students about the importance of jobs connected with this creative industry – not necessarily the ones presenting the shows but those behind the scenes.  Detailing that BBC News airs every half hour means there are lots of people behind the scenes constantly working on writing the dialogue for example, through to the organising of a film crew being sent on location
• The final guest was a technician – specifically a Composites Technician, for which nobody was familiar. They explained that the role involved playing around with different materials which might be found on elite sports cars, for example, including purposely smashing and destroying the material to test their resilience or safety. As you can imagine, lots of students were buzzing about this!

The event allowed our students to learn about different pathways into these industries from the Post 16 route through to which Apprenticeships were available. Each panellist spoke about the importance of developing Enterprising Skills whilst at school and identified some of the vital ones needed for their chosen profession.

Towards the end of the event, our students had the opportunity to have a Q&A with the panellists. There were a range of great questions, for example what was the best/worst thing about their job role; what advice would you give young people starting out in this industry sector; what could someone’s salary be like if they worked in this industry sector.

What a fantastic event to witness, including our students interacting with the guest speakers. Hopefully they have become that little bit more inspired to dream BIG about their futures!

For more information about the BBC Bitesize Careers Tour visit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zdmqfdm