IT’S never too early to start thinking about careers and students across the county are taught about the wealth of options for life post-16. To mark National Careers Week which runs until March 11, we speak to school leaders across the city about how they are preparing young people for the world of work.
As a young person, the prospect of getting a job may appear far off. But as we all know, the day when we have to set foot inside the workplace soon comes around.
With recent figures from the Office of National Statistics revealing increased numbers of young people officially NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training), schools are now increasingly focusing on top-notch careers provision to ensure students reach their full potential in the classroom and beyond.
Part of the challenge for schools’ careers departments is how to prepare students for jobs that may not even exist yet, says Steve Smith, assistant principal and careers lead at Lees Brook Academy.
“The reality is, the jobs our Year 7 students may end up wanting to go into may not even exist now,” he said.
“New roles and sectors are emerging all the time. After Covid we also saw changes to the labour market with more technical jobs out there and green jobs. There is also a lot more hybrid working and working from home.
“Our role is to make sure students are not just thinking about what job they want but are also thinking about the skills they can develop which can be transferred and applied to a number of jobs in the field they’re interested in.”
The focus on careers and employability skills is a large part of the academy’s vision. That work starts early with weekly careers sessions beginning as soon as students join Lees Brook Academy in Year 7. These allow the school to begin explaining the various pathways into work from degrees, apprenticeships, degree apprenticeships, T- Levels and more, as well as the ‘soft skills’ on which employers are placing an ever-increasing importance.
Steve adds: “Employers want to hire people who are numerate and literate but they also really want employees who are resilient, adaptable, who can problem solve and communicate well.”
That is why Lees Brook is looking across the curriculum at how practising and demonstrating those skills can be brought into the teaching and learning of subjects in everyday lessons.
“It may be that, in a lesson the content is delivered by asking students to problem solve first, before being shown the method, so they can see how they approached a problem and came up with possible solutions,” he says.
The school recently held a Year 11 careers fair for students and their parents, with more than 25 providers attending. Steve said he was proud to see former pupils manning the stands of various employers at the event and sharing their experience and expertise.
The focus is not just on the top of the school – this year, pupils in year seven went on a trip to university on their very first day at Lees Brook.
It might seem young – but it’s exactly the right time for students to get their first taste of what tertiary education might be like, says Dan Ingram, assistant principal at Alvaston Moor Academy in Bracken’s Lane.
This year Alvaston Moor escorted 110 year seven pupils to visit the University of Derby where they were given a tour, took part in team building exercises, and heard from a current undergraduate all about the practicalities of university life including all-important information on how to manage a student loan.
“The idea of a school’s comprehensive careers programme is for it to extend across all year groups,” says Dan. “A visit to university for our year sevens is something they will remember and it just gets them thinking from a young age about what they might go on to do after they leave school.
“We often talk about ‘cultural capital’ at school: giving students experiences they might not otherwise have. For a lot of families who send children here, unless you provide those experiences, they might not get another chance.”
For Dan and the leaders at Alvaston Moor, good careers’ provision is about providing students with as many options and ideas as they can.
“Everybody should be thinking about university,” says Dan. “And everybody should be thinking about apprenticeships. It’s giving them that information. If they want to be a brick layer, for example, they need to know how to get the best qualifications, and what a brick layer gets paid.
“We are trying to raise the aspirations for the young people at our school. They really enjoyed the day. For them to be thinking about university at that stage I think was really good.”
Murray Park Community School, in Mickleover, works with E4E, a Derby City Council backed scheme which provides CV workshops, enterprise days and mock interviews for secondary school pupils in the city.
The Mickleover school’s careers lead Tim Taylor has seen first-hand the positive impact that it has had on pupils.
“As a school, we can stand up and say that we have made a difference,” he said. “Having employers in our school lifts them, inspires them.
“We have an extensive careers programme across the whole school with engagement with an extensive range of businesses and local employers, including Toyota Manufacturing UK, Joined Up Careers, Rolls-Royce, British Army, Royal Derby Hospital, Trent Barton, Lubrizol and Alstom.
“Working together with employers enables us to stay updated with the labour market and, ultimately, to support us in providing students with the chance to experience high quality enterprise activities and employability skills.”
The Bemrose School, in Uttoxeter Road, also has its own dedicated careers lead in Claire Amos and they are the first school in the UK to trial CiCi; an innovative chatbot powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning that offers support with creating a CV, latest job vacancies, apprenticeships and volunteering opportunities.
CiCi boasts more than 25,000 full-time jobs, information on courses and further education and 1,500 inspirational career journey videos. It can also be translated into more than 40 different languages and has a text-to-speech function available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Claire says that as well as forging links with local employers and helping to prepare young people for the world of work, visits from organisations such as those working on the HS2 project, the BBC and the police have had a positive effect on pupils.
Claire said: “Careers education in schools has changed so much, particularly over the last five years. There have been huge transformations in schools using the Gatsby Benchmark – eight markers that provide a clear framework for organising the careers provision in schools and colleges – and the bar is now raised.
“We’re proud of our varied and innovative careers programme here at The Bemrose School and it was great to see so many pupils engaged in the activities.”
Last year the Bemrose School welcomed submariners from one of the most advanced attack submarines in the Royal Navy’s fleet – HMS Ambush – who spoke to pupils about their career choices. Bemrose was chosen by the Royal Navy to be officially linked to HMS Ambush, the second of the Astute-class hunter-killer submarines to be built in the UK back in 2013.
Assistant headteacher Michael Dennison, who visited the site in Barrow where HMS Ambush was created back in 2013, said: “The Bemrose School is in an area of the city where social deprivation is high, but inviting inspirational visitors into school like the Royal Navy has helped to inspire our pupils; the latest NEET figures for Bemrose – pupils who are not in education, employment or training when they leave school – is at its lowest ever, and that is partly due to the fact that we have such a varied and committed careers programme.”
Bemrose, which also has a primary provision, begin their careers related learning early.
They were involved in the Department for Education-backed ‘Our Future’ project, of which Derby was a pilot city.
Research by national charity Education and Employers revealed that children as young as six had already decided what careers they could or could not do in the future.
The project, aimed at raising aspirations amongst primary schools in some of the most socially deprived areas of the city, was hailed a success by schools, who were able to engage local employers to connect school children from disadvantage backgrounds to the wider world of work. Delivered by education experts Learn by Design, Our Future included a wide range of presentations and hands-on learning activities covering a wide range of subjects including STEM and English.
It was praised by educators such as Landau Forte Academy Moorhead, where headteacher Ruth McNeil said it helped to broaden the horizons of pupils and connect with the wider community.
She said: “Our Future has had a significant impact on raising aspirations across our school in every year group. Through an accessible and easy to use portal we have been able to access high quality learning resources and bespoke support from outside professionals to fully embed and sustain our career-related learning with real life, hands-on activities to enable our children to thrive within their own community.”
More than 60 schools and multi-academy trusts such as the Embark Federation participated in the Our Future project, with over 10,000 children and teachers supported through a range of inspirational career-related learning activities.
Funding for the Our Future project has now ended, but its legacy has been continued by the High Sheriff of Derbyshire, Mike Copestake who has visited 90 schools across the city and county where he has shown, via an interactive fun, presentation, the wide range of careers available right here in the East Midlands using local people as example – including Belper-born Great Britain hockey captain Hollie Webb, former Alvaston Moor Academy pupil Clive Lawrence OBE, who was once one of the youngest headteachers in the UK, and Emma Hibbert, a quantity surveyor with Bowmer & Kirkland.
