In the third of a new collaborative seminar series, Education and Employers and the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) invited colleagues to discuss how schools, colleges, training providers and policy makers can support young people in their transitions in to further education and work.
This half-day event set out to provide participants with the opportunity to explore effective ways of supporting young people to make successful transitions from schools and colleges in to work or further education. This special half-day symposium followed two successful collaborative seminars organised by Education and Employers and UCL Institute of Education in 2017.
The slides from the session are available to download here.
The symposium was chaired and introduced by Dr Lynne Rogers, Co-Director of the Centre for Education and Work at UCL IoE, she introduced the issue by outlining the difficulties young people face during this transitional period and why this area of work continues to be relevant and important.
In his keynote address Olly Newton, Director of Policy and Research at the Edge Foundation, highlighted the growing UK skills gap and how the anachronistic approach to curriculum design in UK schools was serving only to exacerbate this problem. Using insights from a recent Edge Foundation report, he highlighted eight specific areas where the curriculum could be moulded to better align the skills and behaviours needs of young people to the labour market. The presentation closed by offering international and UK examples of schools and colleges where the curriculum was being designed with future skills needs in mind.
He was followed by Michelle Thompson, DfE. In her presentation, Michelle gave a comprehensive overview of the Raising Participation Age (RPA) policies recently enacted by the DfE. She outlined how specific working and training scenarios could impact young people as this policy comes in to force and the impact of this policy on decreasing the number of NEETs. Michelle’s slides are available here.
The second half of the morning featured two practical workshops exploring the same topic. Julie Surridge, Schools Liaison Manager at Havering College of Further and Higher Education, discussed the various outreach programmes and activities the college provides to better prepare the young people of Havering for work and further training.
She was followed by Jake Armstrong, Work Related Learning and Pathways Lead at Addey and Stanhope School. Jake shared, from his own experience, the practical approaches that schools and colleges can use to meet the Gatsby benchmarks.
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