Year 9 specialist school or college - video transcript

Captions are for the video shown on our Year 9 specialist school or college page.

Title card: Year 9 options at a specialist school or college cxk.org

A member of staff is sat in his van explaining the different options for year 9 students.

"Hello there, my name is Chris i'm a Careers Advisor with CXK, and today we're going to be talking about what your options are in your specialist school or college for year 9.

Now what you'll find is depending on the school or college you're at it will vary as to what options you have available to you. In some specialist schools and colleges the options you have available are the same as in the mainstream school, in which case check out our other video that we did looking at the year 9 options there.

If you haven't got the same options you might have different choices available to you, so this video will help you to make sense of those different choices.

One of the options you might have are what are called life skills. Life skills are there to help you with the day-to-day tasks that you need to live independently, so things like housekeeping and banking so you might have lessons in that. You might find that you have what are called employability skills, and employability skills that help you to develop the skills that you need to have a job in the future. So it could be communication skills, or people skills that you'll need to get on with different people when you're working, or even things like time keeping to help you cope with that, again skills that you need when you have a job.

You might also have what are called vocational subjects, now these vocational subjects are related to the world of work so, they help you to try out different options and different subjects of things that you might like to do. For example it could be cooking, it could be mechanics, it could be construction, and again it gives you an opportunity to try these things out to help you prepare for the world of work in these different areas. These could be the choices that you have.

However you might also find that you won't have any specific choices, but you're more people focusing on building your general skills that you'll need for the future so your maths, your English, and things like that.

You'll also find that you'll have your EHCP, now your EHCP review that you have happens on a regular basis once a year at least. Then those in that basis they ask you questions about what you want to do for the future. That could be a really tricky question to answer, so what you'll find is that you'll get support with that as well and you'll be able to talk to an independent careers advisor to help you talk these ideas through. So my colleagues and I as independent careers advisors, we go around the whole county talking to lots and lots of different students whenever they're trying to weigh up stuff for the future.

Now that question doesn't just include the the job that you want to do in the future, and the type of work you might want to get into. It also includes things like the life that you might want to lead. So for example, the care that you might need to be independent and it's your opportunity to talk about that and to get your views across. It's your opportunity to have your say about what you want for your future and that's why these reviews are really important and it's also really important that you're able to say what you want.

We're trained as careers advisors to help you to express that, and to help you work out what that might be, so you can have your voice captured in the EHCP so your voice is heard about your future. It's really important to get that support that you need.

If you're not sure what options are available to you at your school, or how to access support the first thing you need to do is to talk to your school, and ask them what options might be available to you at your school. That's the most important thing okay, because your school is there to support you and help you to have a positive future.

If you need to get any extra help you can also check out the KCC website which has got what's called the local offer on and on that directory is a whole load of different pieces of information to help you, your parents and carers, to basically look at the support that's available to you so check that out.

There's also the CXK website at cxk.org with lots of other information on there to help you as well when you're thinking about the future.

Anyhow I hope this little video has been helpful and I hope it helps with your next steps - all the best.

Caption: CXK. Inspiring people to thrive. cxk.org