These days, there is a person responsible for careers in schools. Typically, that could be a new teacher, or someone further up through middle leadership to senior leadership but it depends on the school.
That’s my role at Logic in Feltham. I also chair what we call the Subject Network for careers in Hounslow. This involves schools in the borough talking about what we're doing with our students, sharing ideas, and supporting each other.
I also teach business and psychology!
The aim of the subject network is to get everyone together, consider best practise and share ideas.
We also do work experiences at Logic. We'll take young people out to meet employers, see workplaces, visit universities, everything that helps them to see what their options are, so they understand their respective careers landscape and the labour market in the borough.
In school, we also think it’s important to ensure Logic students have the right skills, that they’re going to need to help make those decisions.
We might do it in conjunction with an employer. We'll have specific days where we'll do fun projects in school. We'll create a magazine, or we’ll get pupils to run a business as a project; to try and develop an entrepreneurial spirit.
We’re always here for specific guidance but we’re keen for pupils to develop their own skills, combined with some experiences out there in the workplace – it might simply be a day or a couple of days. We also run the Career Ready programme as well, so we’re conscious of providing a really tailored foundation and making sure the kids are prepared.
By design, Logic is career orientated and tailored to the local labour market and what skills the students need. In the sixth form, we've got a real steer towards career appropriate subjects. So, we teach business, creative media and IT as our main subjects at both BTech and a A-Level.
We follow the national curriculum and we’re a normal state school and we’re part of a multi-Academy trust, but we’re different in that our curriculum is tailored.
I think we’re trying to achieve very much the same thing as elements within the Youth, Skills, and Employment Guarantee, for example, we don’t prioritise going to university. We make sure that students who want to have a job or want to go on to an apprenticeship have as much attention.
It’s important to be fair to young people. They’re not necessarily as work ready as some employers might like. So, employers need to understand the age group they're dealing with - and give them that little bit of additional support.
These entry level jobs are often quite a bit more challenging. Some employers in our local area seem to expect a little bit more than they're necessarily going to get for a school leaver and what my students will find is that they’ll compete in some of the school level or entry level roles against perhaps some university leavers or young people who are that little bit older, into their 20s.
You've got a little bit more confidence at that age. So, I think that can be a real problem in Hounslow – although we’ve got a buoyant labour market and lots of great jobs – there’s a little bit of a gap where you finish school before you’re able to make that first step.
And we’re doing a lot here to ease that by giving them all these experiences and getting them familiar with employers and making sure that we do as much as we can to support the transition.
