What's Your Thing? Competition Winners

Earlier this year, we delivered 19,000 careers information booklets to every year 9 student in Essex, Southend-On-Sea and Thurrok. The 'What's Your Thing?' was created to inform and inspire the children about the many local career opportunities in Essex which will allow them to make informed GCSE choices over this current academic year.

Our annual Evidence Base report highlights seven key sectors which are suffering from critical skills shortages; over 2015, around 75,000 job opportunities were posted in Essex, a number that jumped to 84,500 in our last report (2016 calendar year).

In order to further inspire students, we held seven exciting competitions for the students that received these booklets - one on each sector - and encouraged our readers to design, solve and create in a series of engaging and challenging competitions. With a £30 Amazon Gift voucher to be won for each competition, we received a lot of creative entries so narrowing it down was extremely difficult!

In the end, our seven selected winners came from: King Harold Academy (teacher and winner pictured), Cecil Jones Academy, Basildon Lower Academy, De La Salle School, Saffron Walden County High, Tabor Academy, Becket Keys High School and St. John Payne Catholic School.

We would like to thank everyone who got involved. We had some amazing feedback on our booklet, from students, teachers and parents alike.