Careers & Progression

Edition 36. Date: 21 March 2025

Edition 35. Date: 27 January 2025

Edition 34. Date: 10 January 2025

Edition 33. Date: 10 December 2024

Edition 31. Date: 10 October 2024

Edition 32. Date: 14 November 2024

Edition 30. Date: 19 September 2024

Edition 29. Date: 11 September 2024

Edition 27. Date: 11 June 2024

Edition 26. Date: 24 May 2024

We use the well-established “DOTS” framework for our work. We seek to further the following key outcomes within this framework:

Self-awareness in a career and education context

What do I like? What are my strengths? How do I know?

Opportunity awareness

What are the career and education opportunities out there? How do I find out about them? Research skills, open days, courses, work experience, attending relevant talks etc.

Decision-making skills in the future planning context

Become adept at weighing up the many future options surrounding education and career decisions, and once you have decided on goals to pursue, come up with a realistic and effective plan

Transition skills

So you have identified career and education goals (e.g. you want to get a work placement with Goldman Sachs or you want to gain a place at Oxbridge), what employability/transition skills will you need (e.g. interview skills, CV writing skills, developing understanding of your chosen degree subject etc.) and how do you develop them?

• Year 7: Morrisby Profile (Early Years) Careers Interest Questionnaire – Girls undertake this careers questionnaire, receiving their own careers webspace to research careers and educational opportunities. At this stage we are obviously not asking students to “pick” a career. Rather we are starting a process that continues throughout their time with us (and hopefully beyond) of reflecting on who they are, testing this over time and understanding there is plenty of support available to help them.  In Year 7 we make a special effort to challenge gender stereotypes, such as bringing in the National Physical Laboratory, so that no student thinks this career is not for me on gender grounds.
• Year 8: Students learn career research and employability skills via the national Step into the NHS careers competition. Surbiton High has been a National Winner of Step into the NHS and a London regional winner several times. 
• Year 9:  Revisit Morrisby Profile (Early Years), Careers Interest Questionnaire revisited (from Year 7), together with other activities to help with GCSE choices.  Please see the GCSE Options booklet for our approach to choosing GCSE choices. Year 9 pupils all have group career interviews with the Careers Department to help with their GCSE choices.  
• Year 10: Introduction to CV Writing, Job Applications and Competency-Based Answers and Interviews
• Year 11: The PSHE Programme in Year 11 focuses on Work Experience, concluding with a one-week placement after the GCSE exams.  See below for more details.

Girls take the full Morrisby Careers Profile at the end of Year 10.  It assesses pupils’ abilities, personality and interests through a range of assessments and helps link these to future school subjects, higher education and career choices.   Our in-house careers team are fully trained in the use and interpretation of these profiles and deliver follow-up interviews in Years 11 and 12.   In Years 7 and 9, girls are introduced to The Morrisby Profile by undertaking the interests part of it to provide them with an initial careers profile, which is then revised in Year 10 when they undertake the full assessment.

Parents can read more about The Morrisby Profile at:  https://www.morrisby.com/parents

Parents are billed £55 (subject to variation) for lifetime access to the Morrisby Profile (including the main profiling in Year 10) and an individual student webspace for conducting and recording careers, university, apprenticeship and A-level research.

Each girl has at least two careers interviews, one in Year 11 and another in Year 12, to help with future ideas, particularly A-level, degree and career choices.  Additional appointments are also available on request.

Events we run include an annual Careers and HE Fair and “Working Lunches” for students (and sometimes parents) on university, career and employability skills. Being a large school, we can draw on an incredibly generous and talented parent and Alumni network to deliver these activities covering almost any career and higher education field you can think of

The Careers Department works closely with The Scholars Programmes to ensure girls explore competitive careers and universities and are developing the skills necessary to be realistic applicants.

Our Director of Careers also runs the School’s Oxbridge Programme, and is therefore well placed to support the fostering of key skills for successful Oxbridge applications, such as academic curiosity, criticality and resilience.  We also have unparalleled knowledge of their subject offering and entry requirements.  While our Oxbridge outcomes speak for themselves with circa 10% of our students achieving an offer, much more importantly, it is the value we add in inspiring, empowering and encouraging our Oxbridge applicants which sets us apart. We believe, like-for-like, no student has a better chance of obtaining an Oxbridge offer than with us, and even where they do achieve an offer, we also believe they get a lot out of the programme we offer.  Find out more about our Oxbridge Programme.

While our provision for Oxbridge and Medical School applicants is excellent, our support aims to be the gold standard, whatever pathway you choose.  Therefore, we are adept at supporting students in pursuing the widest range of destinations, from Drama School to Art School, School Leaver Programme to studying internationally.

All students undertake one week’s worth of compulsory Work Experience at the end of the Summer Term in Year 11. From the beginning of Year 11, they are prepared for this programme and undertake in-school activities after their placement to ensure they get as much from it as possible. Work-based learning is vital for developing one’s thinking about career and education choices. Many competitive courses, such as medicine and veterinary science, will also expect it.  Support is also given for finding work experience at other times in a girl’s school career too.