31 March 2026

Dear Parent/Carer,

Work Experience Update

Thank you to all parents, carers and students who have been working hard to secure a work experience placement for May 18th to 22nd and for adding them to the Placement Tool. About half our students have found placements and we know more will be confirmed over the next couple of weeks when students are able to see friends and family over Easter.

If you have arranged a placement for your young person but have not yet informed me, please would you email me on teh@varndean.ac.uk and provide the following details; the name of your young person (and student number), the name and contact email address of the contact, the name of the business, its address and the phone number.

We will also need your young person to add these details to the 'Placements' area on Unifrog (parents/carers cannot do this for them). This can be found on their Unifrog homepage, scroll down to the 'tools' area and 'Placements' is in the middle column, 5 tools down. Once they have added the details, the employer receives a notification from Unifrog which then allows them to complete their essential documentation which is then returned to Teresa who can authorise the placement.

If your young person is still looking for a placement, one of the best ways to search is to add the job area that interests them e.g. accountancy and their post code into Yell.com to access contact details of all relevant businesses. Once a CV is written that is tailored to the job area of interest, it can be uploaded onto the 'Contact Us' area of the company website with a message explaining why they are sending their CV.

If a student needs help writing their CV, they can access support via their 'My Varndean'/Careers/ Careers Website/CV Writing - there is a wealth of careers related information on the Careers Site and we encourage all students to use it alongside the fantastic resources on Unifrog.

By the end of the Easter break, any students who have not added a placement to the Unifrog Placement tool will need to select an option from the Social Action Project list a Google Form, which we will email to them the first week back after Easter.

Students are also welcome to take part in WEX during college holidays. In this case, they do NOT need to add the details to the Unifrog Placement Tool but to have their WEX recorded, they MUST add it to the 'Activities' area of Unifrog once completed.

Kind regards,

Teresa Hoyles

Work Experience Coordinator