Year 12 World of Work Week - Commencing 13 July 2026  

After the Christmas holiday we will be launching our World of Work Week with students. This will take place from Monday 13 July to Friday 17 July, giving students the opportunity to take part in a meaningful work experience activity which gives them a greater insight into the professional working environment and supports them to make informed decisions about their post-18 pathway.   

Students are responsible for finding and securing their own work experience placements. The placement may be found through personal contacts or by students writing to workplaces or companies that interest them. A Tuesday morning Progression session will provide advice to students about how to contact employers. And the slides to the Progression session with email templates can be found here. If students are struggling to secure placements, they should inform their Form Tutor so that support can be offered to facilitate this process.   

To secure approval for a work experience or volunteering placement, students and employers will need to provide details about the level of supervision, insurance cover, and health and safety certificates. These details must be added to the Unifrog platform. Any placement request that does not meet these checks will not be approved by the school. Where placements involve higher-risk environments, more extensive health and safety checks may be required before the school can authorise this. These checks may incur a charge which is payable by the student / family. Please contact us via: HGSsixthform@hgs.rklt.co.uk if you require further information about this charge.   

It may be necessary for the school to visit the location for a placement both in advance and during the placement. Therefore, where possible, we advise students to limit their placement to within Harrogate and the surrounding area.   

The deadline for all documentation to be completed is Monday 13 April 2026. Parents and students should be aware that information returned to school after this date cannot be guaranteed to be passed for checks and may not be approved.  

Adding a placement to Unifrog 

To arrange a work experience placement, students, employers and parents/guardians need to engage with the process through Unifrog. Below are the initial steps a student must take to start this process.   

1. Student contacts employer via email, letter or in person to secure an offer of a placement.  
2. Once an offer is secured, students submit the contact details of the employer into the “Placement” module on their Unifrog account.  

Unifrog will then automatically contact the employer, parents/guardians and school for the required information to secure the placement. Please see the order below.  

1. Unifrog contact the employer to gather further information including risk assessments and insurance policies. 
2. Once the employer has completed this, Unifrog will contact parents/carers for approval.  
3. Once parental consent has been given, Unifrog will contact the school for approval.  

For further details of the process, please follow the link below and login with your son/daughters Unifrog login.  

Unifrog Guide to Adding a Placement   

Virtual work experience opportunities  

We know that it always possible to gain an in-person placement in some industries, or students may not secure a placement for the whole week. There are many virtual work experience programmes that students can use to supplement in-person work experience placements – two of the best websites for finding virtual work experience opportunities are Springpod and Forage.  

Adding a virtual placement onto Unifrog 

1. Please read about each option below, follow the links to find out more.   
2. Register on the website (follow the link) for the virtual experience you are most interested in. [Employability skills options do not require you to register – skip to next step]  
3. Add the placement to Unifrog using the instructions below:  
4. Click on ‘add placement’ and select ‘virtual placement’   
5. Select Mr Twitchin as the ‘placement coordinator’   
6. Add the name of the company you are doing the virtual work experience with and give details about what the programme involves. For example, if it is a finance programme with Barclays on Springpod then you would enter ‘Barclays’ in the name of business/placement.     
7. Add ‘Miss Russell’ to the ‘employer placement lead name’ along with the email address russellh@hgs.rklt.co.uk