On Wednesday 11th February, we held our biennial Careers Fair; themed  “Inspiring Women” to encourage pupils to not only to be inspired – but to be inspiring.

We are lucky enough at Francis Holland Sloane Square to have a highly engaged parent and alumnae community who are leaders in their fields in a vast range of careers. All of our students – from Year 7 to the Upper Sixth – were invited to attend the fair, which we entitled ‘Inspiring Women’. We were also pleased to welcome the entire Year 12 cohort from Trinity Academy. Thanks to the quality of our speakers and exhibitors, they all had an amazing afternoon.

Students were fortunate enough to hear from Claire Watson KC, Lois Heslop, an alumna who is now a commodities trader, Jacky Jones, Regional Director of Circle Health Group, actor and director Yanina Hope and Helena Morrissey who closed our event with an inspiring talk about her career path and the steps she took to advance the representation of women in finance.

If the students weren’t listening to a speaker, they were visiting the exhibition. Having had training sessions on ‘how to ask a good question’, they talked to those in professional and financial services about apprenticeships and graduate programmes, tried out their suturing skills with surgeons, learned about marketing and the creative industries or talked to Leiths Education cookery school about slightly more unusual post 18 routes. The playground was buzzing afterwards with students talking about what they’d heard.

As usual, our students rose to the occasion magnificently and I was very proud to hear from exhibitors and speakers about how impressed they were about the quality and incisiveness of their questions. On the part of the students, they were hugely excited and impressed by the range of opportunities available to them. As Baroness Morrissey pointed out in her talk and book: ‘It’s A Good Time To Be A Girl’.

Caroline Wilkes, Director of Futures & Innovation