Following last year’s publication of the “Drawing the Future” report at Davos, Education and Employers has been liaising with the primary and secondary schools in Davos. Asked to draw the jobs that they would like to do when they grow up, this table shows the results.
Strikingly, the jobs they chose were based on solely on the jobs their parents did or that they were familiar with from their immediate environment.
For the first time ever, delegates who were attending the World Economic Forum in Davos took time out of their very busy schedules to visit the local primary school. 
The event started with a welcome to the guests and then Andreas Schleicher, Director, Education and Skills OECD, answered questions from the children about his job in German. He then ‘took’ them on a world tour of his work commitments over the last year. A novel type of geography lesson!
After that the delegates and Andreas went into the classrooms and talked in small groups to the children about their jobs and careers. A number of the delegates spoke German and for those who didn’t a number of parents kindly acted as translators. The pupils had the chance to find out more about the myriad of careers of the volunteers. The event not only allowed the delegates for the first time to inspire young people but also to hear about their hopes and aspirations as leaders and employers of the future.
Explaining why he had organised the event, Nick Chambers CEO of Education and Employers, ““We now know that this mismatch is set at a young age and heavily influenced by socio-economic background, gender and the role models seen by children,” says Nick Chambers, CEO of Education and Employers. “This means we need to engage with children early on to help inspire their interests and career aspirations. They are our future workforce and key to the success of the fourth industrial revolution. It seemed to me obvious that needed to take these current leaders to meet, inspire and understand the needs of our future leaders.”
The Head Principle of Davos schools, Martin Flütsch, commented, ‘I was delighted to have been approached by the charity back in the summer to see what we might do to inspire our children. We were all surprised by the results of the ‘Drawing of the Future’. It made us realise the importance of volunteers from the world of work coming into school to inspire our young people as we had not expected that our students would have such narrow ambitions for their futures.’
He continued, ‘this event is the first the school has ever had with the World Economic Forum and we were thrilled. It had a real impact on the children exciting them about the world of work and showing the relevance of the subjects they are studying. It really opened their eyes. It was wonderful that they had the opportunity to meet such a varied number of volunteers with very different jobs allowing them to look beyond the world that they know. Having done this once, we are determined that this will not be a one- off event and we are already thinking about next year’s forum and how we can get involved.’
‘Joining the event, was the head teacher of the secondary school, Marco Schneider. He is also very keen to provide a similar opportunity for his students,’ he concluded.
Here is a short video explaining more : https://youtu.be/6N07G6kCgSc
and the full report can be accessed here: https://www.educationandemployers.org/research-type/taskforce-publications/
Delegates that visited included:
- Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills, OECD
- David Cruickshank, Global Chairman, Deloitte
- Andria Zafirakou, Winner, $1m Global Teacher Prize
- Alice Pilia, senior adviser, Conde Nast International
- So-Young Kang, founder and CEO Gnowbe
- Joanna Bryson, Professor of Computer Science, Bath University
- Mark Turrell, YGL alumni, former WEF Techn Pioneer
- Elise Kammerer, Assistant Manager, Deloitte
- Raya Hossain, Apprentice Deloitte
- Osman Haneef, YGL and CEO, MILVIK Pakistan
- Ramya Krishnaswamy- Head PACI, World Economic Forum
- Antoine Hirschy, Head Of ICT cluster, Strategic partnerships, WEF
- Marco Montefiori, Director Bogliasco Foundation Italy
- Michelle Varney Chief of staff to Global CEO Deloitte
- Raj Janagam, CEO Surge Impact, India