Schools need to prioritise careers education as much as other lessons to help young people achieve their potential, says the careers leader of one of the biggest schools in Derbyshire.
Kevin Pickles is Assistant Headteacher at the Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School and is passionate about the need for schools to properly prepare children for their next step once they leave secondary education.
“All teachers are exceptional mentors. We are all teachers of children, and we also have our own subject passions. We are therefore ideally placed to engage this passion and thirst for subject learning in our students,” he said. “What is important is that careers education for us is a thread that runs through a student’s time with us and it is part of everything we do, skills for life are not an afterthought.”
Mr Pickles will be speaking at the Derbyshire and Derby City Heads Careers Forum, organised by the D2N2 Local Economic Partnership at The Farmhouse in Mackworth on Friday, July 8.
Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School holds one of the biggest Careers Convention in the county, bringing together 50-75 employers and providers such as universities, apprenticeship providers and colleges, but Mr Pickles said their careers work is much more than that.
“Careers work is not just looking at jobs, that’s a vital aspect, but it’s also about knowing yourself, it’s important and can be taught and nurtured from primary school age.
“It’s helping them to understand their key skills and attitudes and how the skills and attitudes match the career they want to go into. They need to be able to make informed and realistic decisions.”
Mr Pickles says careers education should start as soon as possible.
“The statutory requirement used to be for careers advice to be provided from Year 8 but children join us in Year 7 so why wait another year?” he said. “Now Year 7 is an integral and strategic starting point.”
“In my opinion the earlier this work starts the better. I know that our Year 10 children who come back from work experience come back with a new understanding about why they need to focus on certain subjects. Beforehand they may not have liked a subject and thought it wasn’t important. Then they go to do some work experience and they come out still not liking that subject perhaps, but understanding why they need to work hard at it.”
Mr Pickles’ experience is backed up by research from the Careers Enterprise Company’s Future Skills Questionnaire which found 69% of pupils who have work experience and good careers education have a better understanding of what they need to do to achieve their ambition.
The same research concluded 75% will continue to work on their career goals even when they get frustrated or hit a barrier and 73% of young people say they are more aware of different careers because of careers provision received.
Angela Ellis from the Careers Enterprise Company, which runs the Careers Hub programme involving schools, said: “We know that careers education works best when the Careers Leader has senior leadership support; this results in the offer being embedded in what the school does and establishes a connection between careers and the curriculum.
“By creating Career Leader capacity, relationships can be forged between the school and local employers, who can advise on what career opportunities are available locally, the attributes required and can come into the school to advice on their careers strategy, deliver careers events and connect lessons to real life employer encounters.”
At the event on Friday, schools will also learn why careers education is important to Ofsted from Jo Ward, Head of Education and Skills at Derby City Council and what a good careers leader looks like from Nicki Moore, Senior Lecturer in Career Development International Centre for Guidance Studies.
The event comes as a consultation on a Government white paper on Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 continues. This paper seeks to strengthen the statutory requirement for schools to provide opportunities for providers of technical educational and apprenticeships to talk to year 8-13 pupils to discuss their education and training options.
Mr Pickles said this is something his school was already doing and encouraged others to.
“We listen to the feedback from students to our careers event and in recent years that has been that they would like to hear more from those companies offering apprenticeships so we have listened to that and have got lots of those providers now engaging with us. Things are changing and we have to adapt to that.”
