Hertfordshire Schools to be part of exciting Experience of Workplace Pilot Project

Up to 50 Hertfordshire secondary schools have been invited to participated in a pilot project, funded through the Careers Hub, to test new and innovative models to provide students with effective and impactful experiences of the workplace.

Hertfordshire Careers Hub is one of 6 Hubs across the national Careers and Enterprise Company network to have been approached to work on this strand of the project based on the current high levels of Gatsby Benchmark 6 attainment recognising that there are only a relatively small number of young people who do not get the opportunity to visit a workplace as part of their careers education journey.

In research carried out during Autumn Term to determine some of the frequent barriers preventing some schools enabling EVERY student to gain an experience of the workplace it was revealed that:

• 38% of schools have no budget to fund experience of workplace visits with a  further 25% indicating that they have insufficient funding available to provide EVERY student with an experience.
• A majority of schools provide experience of workplaces in Years 10 and 12 but very few consider providing them for Key Stage 3 students.
• Students with SEN were cited as being the most challenging to providing an experience of a workplace but there were high frequency of students with low attendance, with behavioural issues and from low-income households.

For the remainder of this academic year The Careers Hub, in partnership with Services for Young People aims to provide up to 2000 young people with an opportunity to experience a workplace – models could include group 2-hour workplace tours and opportunities to interact with multiple employees, project-based assignments taking place on employer premises or the more traditional work experience placements though there is license to innovate.

In an online workshop last week the project was explained with input from Anna Morrison CBE whose organisation, Amazing Apprenticeships led on the research.

The video is available to watch here and PowerPoint presentation used can be accessed here.

We are also looking for employers to come forward if able to accommodate these presentations – this article will explain more.