For secondary schools & sixth formsSupports Gatsby Benchmark 4

Help your students access dental careers

Free, structured dental career pathways for Years 7 to 13, with nothing for your team to administer. No teacher logins, no licence fee, and five resources you can use today.

  • Free for every school
  • No teacher dashboard
  • Supports Gatsby Benchmark 4
  • Written by a practising UK dentist
Talk to us about your schoolRead the widening participation guide
GB4Supports Gatsby Benchmark 4Links school science to a real careerWhat is Benchmark 4?
Ready for your classroom

Ready to use today

Two assembly packs with full speaker notes, a student passport, letters for parents and a guide for careers staff. All free, and nothing to sign up for.

PowerPoint · 13 slides
Careers assembly, Years 7 to 9

Speaker notes on every slide: what to say, what students ask, and how to answer.

15 to 20 minutes

Assembly pack, Years 7 to 9

A careers assembly with speaker notes on every slide, so you need no clinical knowledge to deliver it. Aimed at widening what students think is possible.

Download PowerPoint
PowerPoint · 12 slides
Choosing subjects, Years 10 to 11

Entry requirements stated plainly, and how early the process really starts.

For students choosing subjects

Assembly pack, Years 10 to 11

The companion pack for students choosing subjects. Entry requirements stated plainly, the routes in that are not the standard offer, and a timeline that shows how early the process starts.

Download PowerPoint
PDF · 18 pages
One page per school year

Year 7 to Year 13, each with a short list of things to do and one honest note.

A5, prints two-up on A4

The Passport

Colour-coded to the Spark, Build and Launch pathways. A5, so it prints two-up on A4 and folds into a pocket.

Download PDF
Word · 4 templates
Letters and talking points

A letter home, an email to families, a letter about cost, and parents’ evening talking points.

Adapt onto your own letterhead

Parent communication templates

The letter about cost carries no figures on purpose: they change every year and a letter outlives them.

Download Word
Read onlineFor careers staff

Widening Participation & Contextual Offers

Every UK and Ireland dental school’s widening access scheme in one place

Explains POLAR4, TUNDRA, SIMD, HEAR and DARE, and says plainly where we could not confirm a rule specific to dentistry.

Read the guide
Every figure quoted in these resources is sourced, and each pack lists where. Entry requirements, admissions test dates and salaries change year to year, so check anything you plan to state as fact before you say it.
Whole-school progression

What each year group gets

Years 7 to 13, split into what the school can introduce and what students do on their own.

SparkKey Stage 3

Years 7–9: Early discovery

What dentistry involves, with no test pressure

What the school can introduce

The Years 7 to 9 assembly pack: a 15 to 20 minute careers assembly with speaker notes.

What students do on their own

The Spark pathway: the seven jobs in the dental team, an oral health quiz, and a guide to the GCSEs that matter. No account needed.

Gatsby Benchmarks 2 and 4Explore Spark →
BuildKey Stage 4

Years 10–11: GCSEs and experience

Subjects, grades and what counts besides them

What the school can introduce

The Years 10 to 11 assembly pack, for students choosing subjects: entry requirements and the routes in.

What students do on their own

The Build pathway: the GCSE grades each dental school asks for, the thirteen things dental schools look for, and the A-level subject rules. No account needed.

Gatsby Benchmark 4Explore Build →
LaunchKey Stage 5

Years 12–13: The application year

Choosing dental schools, the personal statement and interviews

What the school can introduce

The widening participation guide, so choices and references take account of contextual offers, and the 15 October UCAS deadline for dentistry.

What students do on their own

A side-by-side comparison of 17 dental schools, the Personal Statement Reviewer, MMI interview practice and the UCAT Method Coach. The tools that save work ask for a free account.

Gatsby Benchmark 4Explore Launch →
What it asks of your school

Built for school realities

Careers leads and heads of sixth form have very little time. This is what DentiSpark asks of yours.

Nothing to administer

Cost to your school

£0

Free for every school and every student. No licence, no subscription and no paid tier.

No licence fee

Teacher workload

No logins

No teacher accounts, no class lists to upload, nothing to mark and no progress to monitor.

No dashboard

Supervision

Self-directed

Students use the pathways and tools in their own time, at school or at home. Whether to supervise is your school’s call.

Independent study

Ready materials

Scripted

Two assembly packs with speaker notes on every slide, so you need no dental knowledge to deliver them.

Speaker notes included

Student data

Minimal

The pathways and the assessment need no account, and the assessment saves nothing. Tools that save work ask for a free account.

Safeguarding policy published
Getting started

Getting your school started in 3 steps

No software to install and no staff training.

Talk to us
  1. 01

    Get in touch, or just start

    Download the resources above and use them straight away, or tell us about your school with the form below and we will reply.

    Takes a couple of minutes

  2. 02

    Introduce it to students

    Use one of the assembly packs in an assembly or tutor time, or share the pathway for each year group in your careers newsletter or on your school’s learning platform.

    Staff effort: one session

  3. 03

    Students take it from there

    They open the pathway for their year group: Spark for Years 7–9, Build for 10–11, Launch for 12–13. No account is needed; some tools ask for a free account because they save what a student writes.

    Nothing for your team to administer

Nothing to install: DentiSpark runs in a web browser.

Questions from schools

Common questions from schools

Cost, workload, Gatsby, student data and independent schools.

Is DentiSpark really free for schools?

Yes. Every resource, pathway and tool is free for every school, state or independent, and for every student. There is no paid tier and nothing to upgrade to.

Do teachers have to manage logins or oversee student progress?

No. There is no teacher dashboard, so there are no class lists, passwords or progress to chase. Students use DentiSpark in their own time. Whether to supervise that is your school’s decision, as it would be for any online resource.

How does DentiSpark support Gatsby Benchmark 4?

Benchmark 4 asks schools to link curriculum learning to careers. DentiSpark links school science to a real career: the Spark pathway connects the dental-health content in the revised RSHE guidance and Key Stage 3 science to what the dental team does, and Build shows which GCSE and A-level sciences each dental school asks for.

How can DentiSpark help us engage parents and carers?

The revised Gatsby Benchmarks ask your careers programme to engage parents and carers throughout (Benchmark 1) and to help them use careers information (Benchmark 2). Our page for parents is written for them: what DentiSpark is and is not, what actually helps a child considering dentistry, and how we handle safeguarding and privacy. The parent communication templates above give you a letter home, an email to families, a letter about cost and parents’ evening talking points to send them there.

How is student data protected?

The pathways and the assessment work without an account, and the assessment keeps nothing a student types. Some tools ask for a free account because they save what a student writes; what we collect and why is in our privacy policy. Our safeguarding policy names a lead and sets out how to raise a concern.

What if we are an independent school?

Everything is free for independent schools too, on exactly the same terms. There is no paid package.

What training do careers staff need?

None. The assembly packs carry speaker notes on every slide, and the pathways are written for students to use on their own.

Talk to us about your school

Tell us about your school and what would help, and we will reply.

0/500

It goes to contact@dentispark.com.

No sign-up needed

Ready to introduce DentiSpark at your school?

Use the resources straight away, or see the pathways and tools your students will use.

See the resourcesBrowse the student tools
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