By Ms Drapela (Careers and Sixth Form Administrator)

It’s always a pleasure to welcome our alumnae back into school, and last week (26th January) we were lucky to hear Helen Lund (BHS 2005) would be back in Bedford and available to join us for a Lunch Box Lecture, part of our on-going careers series.

During her time here, she spoke with some of our Senior School students and recounted her time in school, having studied Economics and Politics at the University of York. Following her time at university, she then joined the civil service fast stream and has spent most of her time working in the Department for Education and HM Treasury with a few brief secondments to the New Zealand Government and Tesco head office.

Helen Lund currently works as a Senior Civil servant in the Department for Education and works on teacher recruitment, retention and development in further education.

Helen was keen to talk about how she became a civil servant, what it’s like to work in the centre of government alongside politicians and skills she needed to demonstrate to build her career in government.

In closing she left her audience assured that no one route was the same and that there were a wide variety of careers, not exclusive to politics, available within the government alone. Helen’s talk provided a really interesting insight into a politics-based career and we are grateful for the time she spent with our enthusiastic students eager to explore their interests.