Wednesday 29th January 2025 saw our Spring Term Launch meeting for our Career Leader Network. You will find the meeting notes below and access to the presentation slides here – CL Network Spring Term Launch

Key Themes from the Next 10 Review:

• • Five Themes:  the five prominent themes from the review: careers at the heart of education and leadership, inclusion and impact for all young people, meaningful and varied encounters, use of information and data, and parental engagement.

Careers at the Heart of Education and Leadership:

• • Embedding Careers: Importance of embedding careers into the school culture and ensuring that all staff members understand their roles in career education.
  • Careers Impact System: The careers impact system as a tool to help embed careers within the school, highlighting its role in supporting leadership and planning.
  • Leadership Role: The critical role of leadership in embedding careers education, ensuring that career education is integrated into the school’s overall strategy and culture.

Inclusion and Impact for All Young People

• • Tracking Provision: Importance of tracking provision for vulnerable students and SEN students, ensuring that their needs are met and that they receive appropriate support.
  • SENCO Engagement: Encouraged the sharing of SENCO emails to facilitate better communication and support for SEN students, emphasizing the need for mainstream SENCOs to engage with the inclusion community of practice.
  • FSQ and Compass: Recommended using tools like the Future Skills Questionnaire (FSQ) and Compass to track and evaluate provision, helping to identify gaps and improve support for vulnerable students.

Meaningful and Varied Encounters:

• • Importance of Encounters: The importance of ensuring that encounters and experiences provided to students are meaningful and varied, contributing to their career readiness.
  • Support Examples: Examples of support offered by the careers hub, including enterprise advisors, teacher encounters programs, and industry days, to help schools provide meaningful encounters for students.
  • Benchmark Emphasis: The  benchmark review emphasises the need for meaningful encounters, ensuring that students have opportunities to develop skills and knowledge through varied experiences.

Employer Engagement and Enterprise Advisors:

• • Michelle Fox’s Role: Michelle introduced herself as the employer engagement enterprise coordinator, explaining her role in engaging businesses and recruiting enterprise advisors to support schools and colleges.
  • Skills Pledge: Michelle highlighted the Lancashire Skills Pledge, which encourages businesses to support young people in becoming work-ready and to become enterprise advisors.
  • Work-Ready Booklet: Michelle mentioned the Work-Ready Lancashire booklet as a resource for supporting young people and employers, helping to bridge the gap between education and employment.

Work Experience Projects:

• • Lisa Struther’s Role: Lisa introduced herself as the work experience project officer, explaining her role in leading pilot projects to develop and implement innovative approaches to work experience.
  • Project Aspects: Lisa mentioned the different aspects of the work experience project, including digital and cyber collective workplace experiences, looked after children experiences, and advanced manufacturing and health and social care work experience.
  • Project Trials: Lisa noted that trials for the work experience project are underway, and schools interested in participating should contact their enterprise coordinator to express their interest.

Workplace Encounters: Work experience, which build experiences over a young person’s time in school, with opportunities to inspire, investigate, and apply skills.

• • Shift in Approach: John discussed the shift from traditional work experience to build experiences over a young person’s time in school, providing more comprehensive and varied opportunities.
  • Example Structure: John provided an example of how workplace encounters might look, with students having opportunities to inspire, investigate, and apply skills through various experiences over their school years.
  • Greater Manchester Pilot: pilot project, Equalex, which focuses on building workplace experiences over time rather than traditional one-week placements, offering a model for future implementation.
  • Use of Information and Data: Tina highlighted the importance of using information and data to inform provision. She mentioned the shift from tracking destinations for three years to focusing on intended destinations and participation data. She also encouraged using tools like the Future Skills Questionnaire and Compass to capture and evaluate provision

Engagement of Parents and Carers: The importance of engaging parents and carers in supporting young people. We mentioned the strengthened requirement to share information with parents and carers and the need to think strategically about how to engage different parent groups.

Resources and Support: Various resources and support available, including the Careers and Enterprise Academy, teacher encounters, and CEC Links support for apprenticeships and technical education. She encouraged participants to explore these resources and share them with their colleagues.

Follow-up tasks:

• Peer-to-Peer Review Participation: Express interest in participating in a peer-to-peer review by using the link https://forms.office.com/e/ncVHxLDwmZ
• or contacting the team.
• SENCO Email Sharing:  Please Share Mainstream and FE SENDCO email addresses with the team to facilitate inclusion into our Inclusion Community of Practice.
• Work Experience Pilot Project: Inform your enterprise coordinator if your school is interested in participating in the work experience pilot project.
• Parental Engagement Modules: Inform your enterprise coordinator if interested in participating in parental engagement modules to assess demand and organise sessions.
• Work Ready Lancashire Booklet: Review and utilize the Work Ready Lancashire booklet in curriculums, careers provision, and wider school programs – https://lancashirecareershub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Work-Ready-Lancashire-Booklet.pdf
• Teacher Encounters Registration: Register for upcoming teacher encounters at James’s Place REGISTER HERE.  Lancashire County Council REGISTER HERE  and Vitrex. REGISTER HERE

Internal Leadership Review video:

https://youtu.be/NUKvPE_R9fU?feature=shared