How Can We Link Curriculum With Careers?

By Adam Herbertson

As part of the statutory requirements in schools, all subject teachers should link curriculum with careers. Throughout their studies, every student should be informed about how each subject they are studying can help them gain entry to (and be more successful in) a wide range of occupations. Research shows that students feel more engaged in learning when they can see why it is relevant to people’s lives, which directly links to our school goal of lessons being student-centred. They also become more aspirational when they are more aware of the potential pathways available to them. Subject teachers are highly influential, students are 18 times more likely to be motivated to learn if teachers know their ambitions for the future.

One of the key ways to achieve this benchmark is to include links to careers in unit plans. This can be done by including how the subject, and individual topics, relate to specific careers and highlighting how content and themes link to essential skills, pathways and roles. Some other tips to link careers to your lessons include:

• Highlighting essential skills development in your subject area

• Highlighting pathways at 16/18 from your subject

• Identifying jobs roles/sectors that link to your subject

• Creating careers display boards

• Creating career bios for teachers within the department

• Giving school trips a careers focus e.g. asking an external person on the trip to speak about their career to the students

• Involving family members or alumni in homework projects e.g. students speak to them about their jobs/careers and complete an assignment about it

• Involving guest speakers in classes e.g. having external employees or alumni come in from careers linked to the subject come into lesson to speak about their careers

We are required to track all careers interactions for students and I will be using Unifrog to log these. If you do arrange any employer visits to lessons, school trips to workplaces or involving careers, workshops taken part in etc. please let me know! 

Unifrog has several useful resources to link curriculum to careers. There will be Unifrog-related sessions in Personal Development each term for each year group to help students start to use Unifrog regularly. Additionally, there are many different resources you can use in lessons. By going on unifrog.org and scrolling down to ‘student side’, you can see how the website looks to students. From there, if you click on careers library, you can search for keywords or search by school subjects and you will see a wide range of careers. As an example, here is the profile for a nurse including: day-to-day duties, working hours and environment, career path and progression, skills required, entry requirements, labour market information (for Westminster, London and the UK) and much more. These job profiles can be included in lessons and linked to specific units. You, and students, can also access the subjects library to find degrees linked to different subjects and see various information on how students can get into that subject and how to prepare for it. There are also a wide range of subject-related videos, articles etc. in the read, watch, listen section.

If you have any questions or need any support, please come and speak to me!

Bitesize Research: Careers Education Provision For Young People

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone had a good week so far! I’ve been looking at some themes we’ll be touching upon in September INSET, one of which is careers. We also had a really interesting Wednesday briefing from Alex James looking at destinations and UCAS a few weeks ago, and we’ve got work experience for YR10 and YR12 coming up in July. As such, this week, I was interested in a recent report from March 2022 by the Sutton Trust on Careers education. Objectives:

To understand the current provision available to young people about their careers and the barriers to improving careers education and guidance. Summary:

• The report suggests that there are two divisions in the current provision for young people across the UK. Firstly between state schools in different areas of affluence, and secondly between the state and private sector.
• The research suggests that 32% of teachers in the state sector believe they don’t have enough funding to deliver good careers education, compared to 6% of private school teachers.
• The research suggests that 51% of teachers in state schools believe that there isn’t enough staff time for good careers education, whereas this is 33% in private schools.
• One-third of secondary pupils felt that they were not confident in taking their next steps after leaving school, and a similar proportion said that had not received any work experience whilst at secondary school.
• The Sutton Trust therefore is recommending the following:
• Better access to careers advisers - including having a dedicated careers lead in school
• Time in the curriculum - suggesting that schools need to protect and include ringfenced time for careers education
• Apprenticeship support - currently, pupils are four times less likely to receive substantial guidance on apprenticeship routes than on traditional university ones

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How do I support my students’ and tutees’ in their understanding of careers and the world of work currently?
• How does my curriculum support careers information, advice and guidance on entry to, and be more effective workers within, a wide range of careers in my subject’s industry?
• How do I provide encounters with organisations and employers that compliment my curriculum offer?
• What support do I need further to help with this?
• How much knowledge and understanding do I have of apprenticeship routes?

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you!

What Happens Next? Teaching Students To Explore Subjects Beyond The Curriculum

By Esin Akdogan

Students come to the end of their mandatory, full-time education after year 13, which is a scary prospect for many. Most students, especially those at Westminster Academy sixth form, will go on to study a subject of their choice at a British university. Of course, others who prefer a more vocational route progress into apprenticeships and other jobs. It is therefore important to plant the seeds that will help students explore subjects beyond their curriculum. In the context of WA, many students have parents who did not go to university which means higher education may not be a part of the normal discourse at home. Whilst this doesn’t seem like a big deal, the anecdotes guardians tell their children about their experiences at university at home is an important part of shaping their understanding of what higher education is like. As such, teachers play a crucial role in bridging the gap for students who have not been exposed to the ‘university talk’ at home. The most obvious way of getting students to start thinking about the next steps is in school. Of course, every student will have different needs and hence need individualised support which is provided to them when they reach the sixth form. In the meantime, I have listed some things staff could be doing in the classroom to get students to explore subjects beyond their curriculum. Whilst this list is not exhaustive, it is definitely a good place to start.

What does the Sixth Form team do already?

We have already kick-started the UCAS process for year 12s with an assembly explaining what university is, whether it is suitable for them, what to consider when making their choices and how to narrow their choices down. Later this term we will have students start writing their first drafts for their personal statements. Aside from this, WA is also great at providing sixth form students with extra and super-curricular opportunities, by posting frequently on Managebac and promoting it during tutor time. Westminster Academy is also the hub school for OxNet and the London Centre for Languages and Culture (LCLC), two unapologetically academic access and outreach schemes, with the aim of raising aspirations for students who are interested in attending Russell Group universities or doing languages at university.

How can you help? Inquiry-based learning: inquiry-based learning essentially flips the concept of learning on its head. Rather than teaching students to memorise information, inquiry-based learning encourages students to become more invested in their subjects and spark their curiosity. The IB is already great at teaching students to ask questions, with the help of their Theory of Knowledge lessons and Extended Essay research projects. This gets students into the habit of expanding their learning outside the classroom which might lead to them discovering an area of interest they might want to explore further at university. Teaching students to be inquisitive essentially does the job for you. Exposure: talking about your own academic and social experiences at university is a great way to ‘plant the seed’ in their minds. I noticed that speaking to students about my university experience during TTB meant that they were also talking about it amongst themselves during break and lunch. The more they are exposed to other peoples’ first-hand experiences, the better their understanding will be of what is expected of them before they start. Resources: you should spark interest in students to want to research and explore new topics in their free time. Giving them reading suggestions or even links to YouTube videos, based on a topic you have covered in class gives them the chance to explore topics that relate to but how above and beyond their curriculum. Talking about your favourite part of your own subject with them will also spark an interest that will encourage them to put the work in to discover subjects beyond their curriculum.