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!

Bitesize Research: Sustainability & Climate Change In Secondary Schools

By Jaya Carrier

Welcome back - I hope everyone had a lovely Easter break, and that you’re having a good first week back. 

This week’s bitesize is a little bit different and I’m using it to highlight a really exciting research project that we at WA are taking part in. One of the most pressing global issues facing us and our students is climate change and sustainability. In light of this, we were delighted to be approached by the new Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability at the Institute of Education to take part in their research into how this issue is embedded into schools and education.

For this work, researchers from this centre will be coming into WA for two days in May to speak to our staff, to look at our current approaches to this issue, and to support us with devising future initiatives. 

Objectives:

To examine how climate change and sustainability are approached by schools in the UK currently, and then to devise and disseminate best practices on how to educate about these issues going forward

Summary: 

• The new Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability is reporting that a significant proportion of teachers feel underprepared to teach about climate change and sustainability.
• They acknowledge that effective education on this issue may also require a change in values education, careers education as well as better knowledge. They also acknowledge that this work is likely to be cross-disciplinary to be most effective. 
• They are looking to work with teachers across the UK to develop their work in tandem with teachers.
• The need for better support for teachers is also acknowledged in the Department for Education’s recent Climate and Sustainability Education draft strategy 

How does this impact me and my practice?:

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

 

• What is the value of climate change and sustainability education?
• What am I currently doing to promote sustainability to my students?
• What would I like to do to support sustainability and climate change education?

 

If you would like to discuss this further with me or if you’d like to take part in some of this research - please let me know! I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Young People's Perceptions Of Career Prospects Post-Lockdown

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s had a great first week back having had a restful break! This week, following on from the Unifrog briefing we had in T2, I was really interested in a piece of research conducted by UCL Institute of Education about young people’s perceptions of their career prospects following the lockdowns in 2019 and 2020. Objectives: To understand the potential impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns on young people’s job skills and beliefs about their suitability and readiness for the workplace. Summary:

• 60% of students felt as though their job skills and prospects were significantly diminished by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• 42% of students did not know the job they would have by age 30
• Youth unemployment grew at a faster rate than at any point since the financial crisis of 2008
• One of the reasons for this is because of a loss of opportunities to gain key job skills during their education in the context of the pandemic and the post-pandemic (which has focussed more on ‘catch up’)
• The authors of the paper suggest that there needs to be an immediate refocusing on workplace skills in schools, and partnerships between schools and employers.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

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

• How do I integrate or reference the workplace and workplace skills in my lessons?
• How do I support careers education in tutor time?
• How can I work with students to raise their aspirations around their workplace prospects?
  

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

  

What would you like to be when you grow up? A Careers Education Update

By Paula Bull

There has been so much in the news about how our students are being disadvantaged due to Covid and the ongoing issues regarding education and the labour market crisis, I guess that is why I have been inundated by so many local businesses! Some of you may remember back to the careers twilight session I did in April, or various briefings - careers learning is not just a standalone session, we need to embed this into our daily teaching. So what exactly is careers learning and how can you help?

What is Careers Learning?

In schools, we have a responsibility to provide students with careers learning. It is measured against the eight Gatsby Benchmarks:

1. A stable careers programme

2. Learning from career and labour market information

3. Addressing the needs of each pupil

4. Linking curriculum learning to careers

5. Encounters with employers and employees

6. Experiences of workplaces

7. Encounters with further and higher education

8. Personal guidance

All staff members have a role to play in preparing our students for the future whether that be in the curriculum, pastoral or as a role model. As a school we do a huge amount of work to ensure we provide exciting opportunities for all but as with everything, it looks a little different this year! 

What do we already do as a school?

I am ensuring we have a stable careers programme, and during TTB students are learning from career and labour market information. Working with SLT and year coordinators, we aim to ensure all students needs are met - where necessary additional measures are put into place. We have industry mentors working with year 11 and 12 students, including Budding Brunels and Career Ready. In the past we have had an Outward Bounds programme specifically for students identified as at risk of NEET - this year we are unfortunately unable to run this at present. 

Some of our normal workshops have moved online, some have been postponed until things settle down slightly - we need to ensure we cover so much more in the curriculum to make up for things that were missed in the summer term last year. Work experience will take place virtually this year, and the Mock Interviews will be online too. In order for our students to get as much out of their career learning as possible we really need classroom teachers and tutors to step up - we will be relying on your expertise and planning to bring lessons to life and link transferable skills to classroom learning.  

How can you help?

What you can do as classroom teachers is ensure you are linking careers into the curriculum and engaging with volunteers to ensure students continue to have encounters with employers and employees. With the widespread use of video conferencing it’s now super easy to organise a company to Zoom into your lesson and talk to students. You no longer need to plan a whole day out, organise cover and travel or complete lengthy risk assessments (you do still need to do an Evolve form and gain permission though!). Simply identify a lesson / topic which could lend itself well to having a visitor and get planning. I have tons of contacts and am more than happy to introduce you if you are struggling with finding someone - or try any of these links:

• STEM Ambassadors - volunteers from a wide range of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related jobs and disciplines across the UK. They offer their time and enthusiasm to help bring STEM subjects to life and demonstrate the value of them in life and careers.

• Founders 4 Schools - connecting educators with leaders of successful growing businesses in their community

• City Lions - they have links to lots of local businesses and are able to organise sessions and workshops on an adhoc basis

• Speakers for Schools - through talks from today’s influential figures via their  programme, their  work  programme linking state school students to industry-leading companies and networked support partners they are helping level the playing field for young people of all backgrounds. 

• Springpod - access to employers and lots of talks (recorded and live options)

Don’t forget to mention transferable skills as often as you can - these link nicely to the IB learner profile and are publicised in classrooms so easily recognisable. Resources to help you with planning careers learning into lessons can be found here:

Subject guides from Success at School

A ‘day in the life’ videos

Labour Market Information

Online CPD - Linking Curriculum Learning to STEM careers

CEC resources 

iCould - videos, real life stories, LMI and more

Unifrog (use ‘student view’)

Me - I have access to a huge number of contacts and support networks! 

What about the future?

Please remember that although young people have been hugely impacted by Covid 19 and the economic impact will be felt for a very long time, there are some positives to take from this. Medicine, education and technological developments are all areas that have been highlighted and continue to grow. Students have shown amazing resilience and aptitude to adapt, we need to celebrate their successes and support them as best we can. Continue to inspire and educate. Link learning to careers, celebrate those transferable skills and be positive. Together we will ensure our students leave as WA heroes and go on to lead rewarding careers!