Key skills gap year experiences shared

Each year at King’s a key skills session is organised where young OVs return to school to give insights into their time on gap years, to the current Upper Sixth students. This year, due to Covid restrictions, the session was run online led by Mrs Rees. Five OVs took part, offering advice and sharing their gap year experiences which included lots of travel to the Far East and Australia, volunteering, work experience as well as employment here in the UK.

Our thanks go to Francesca Descher (Cl 10-17) who worked at an international school in Egypt, Archie Jury (K 12-19) who did volunteer work in Nepal, Maggie Bullock (Os 12-19) who worked at a school in South Korea, George Gudgeon (Os 08-15) who travelled to Australia and Miles Maley (Cl 12-19) who spent time in China and Hong Kong.

This year inevitably some gap year plans were affected by the Coronavirus pandemic and Miles included in his talk the Chinese phrase, “where there’s change, there’s opportunity” and he also reflected, in a freshly positive light, that Covid-19 has given people the chance to shine. Miles told us afterwards,  “I definitely thought some old Chinese wisdom might offer some new insight to the UK, or at least help some soon-to-be OVs.”

It certainly sounds like the students who shared their gap year experiences learnt some brilliant skills and their adventures and activities have given them a new and fresh insight. We are very grateful to the five OVs who took part and willingly and enthusiastically shared their gap year stories with the current students, and to Mrs Rees for organising the talks.