Creating lasting connections between teachers and employers

Diane Fisher, Careers Leader at The Duston School

As a careers leader, I know the vital importance of building meaningful relationships with local employers. The updated Gatsby Benchmarks reinforce this: Benchmark 2 now places emphasis on teachers having access to and using up-to-date careers and labour market information, and changes to Benchmark 4 highlight the importance of all subject teachers linking their curriculum content to career progression routes.

With this in mind, I was keen to address the updates to both benchmarks simultaneously. In collaboration with the South Midlands Hub, we developed a speed networking event for teachers to connect with local employers. The aim was twofold: to provide our teaching staff with insights into current career pathways relevant to their subject areas, and to strengthen employer engagement across the curriculum.

The first key challenge was to find space in the Teachers’ CPD calendar – a precious and often oversubscribed resource! Thanks to the support of both our Head and Assistant Head, we held a preparatory session before Christmas. We knew this type of event was new territory for some staff, so it was important to acknowledge their concerns and offer reassurance. The session aimed to build confidence, answer questions, and show that they weren’t expected to have all the answers – just to be open to conversation.

The event itself took place in January and was designed to be a positive, supportive experience for everyone involved. After a brief arrival period and breakfast, teachers took part in a one-hour speed networking session with a wide range of local employers.

Feedback from staff was largely positive. Many colleagues found the event insightful and were enthusiastic about the opportunity to make real-world connections between their subjects and career pathways. However, we also recognise that some staff are still building confidence with this style of interaction, and we’re keen to support colleagues to shift mindsets and help them understand how events like this can support their curriculum delivery and deepen students’ understanding of future opportunities. Employers were equally enthusiastic, noting how valuable it was to engage with educators in a way that could directly benefit young people.

This event successfully brought Benchmarks 2 and 4 to life in a practical, human way – and we’re already looking forward to building on it in the future.

Mandy Green, Operational Hub Lead and Claire Coles, Careers Consultant, South Midlands Careers Hub

Through discussion and the exploration of Compass data (specifically Benchmark 4) we identified a need to support careers leader, Diane Fisher, to raise the profile of careers within the school community, with the aim of increasing the presence of careers in the curriculum. Our focus was to improve staff knowledge of local industry through employer engagement.

Success would be achieved by measuring the following:

1. An increase in teachers’ understanding of the local labour market
2. An increase in engagement between educators and employers
3. An increase in employers supporting school events throughout the year

We promoted the event to our networks and successfully achieved representation from a broad cross-section of employers from various sectors.

This was the first time that some staff were involved in this type of event, so there was understandably some anxiety as they were going outside their comfort zone. Networking with external organisations was a new thing for many of them.

This presented a new challenge. We were keen to allay fears, ensuring all staff felt prepared and confident in meeting our employers. Our team, along with the Careers Leader, responded by incorporating a pre-event staff CPD session. This included a presentation on the Gatsby Benchmarks, providing context and background information; the ‘why?’. Helen Russell, the Enterprise Adviser, delivered key tips for successful networking and a booklet, containing employer profiles was shared, providing staff with an opportunity to familiarise themselves with those attending.

A successful event was delivered, with many meaningful conversations captured.There were further excellent outcomes including:

• The majority of employers remain in contact with the school, offering to support specific events and initiatives.
• A pilot programme identifying a curriculum team to embed careers content into a scheme of work, employing the expertise and support of local employers.
• Repeating the breakfast event, with increased staff engagement and confidence.

My recommendation to any school or college wishing to adopt this approach to employer engagement would be to spend time engaging staff ahead of the event. Introduce the event fully and emphasise your reasons for including it in your programme. It is extremely important for all staff to feel involved and to fully understand the aims and objectives.

Bringing educators and employers together is an effective way of improving staff awareness of post-16/18 pathways and elevating awareness of the skills employers value. It can also assist in increasing progress towards Benchmarks 2 and 4.

One take-away from the event was the importance of ensuring all attendees wore a badge clearly displaying their name and company/curriculum subject. This allowed for quicker identification, allowing individuals to locate those they most wanted to meet, (e.g. ensuring 100% that the maths teacher definitely speaks to the accountancy firm!).

Helen Russell, Enterprise Adviser

My role as enterprise adviser is to build relationships with employers on behalf of The Duston School. I’d been helping Diane Fisher, the careers leader to ensure staff are well informed about labour market information, but we wanted to do something to bring it to life and contextualise their learning. We came up with the idea of a speed networking event: we wanted to get maximum exposure for the teachers within the shortest amount of time (given how packed the CPD schedule is and being mindful of employers’ valuable time).

I was keen to ensure that the employers got something out of the event too, beyond just a free breakfast! They got to understand what the current curriculum looks like (many, of course, went to school several years ago) direct from teachers’ mouths and the feedback at the end said they found these chats with teachers insightful.

In my experience, not all teachers know loads about job roles and opportunities that can be linked to their particular subject, but the updated benchmarks emphasise that in every year, in every subject pupils should learn about this, with teachers linking curriculum learning with progression routes and careers forming part of ongoing staff CPD. Part of my role is to drip-feed these insights throughout the year to teachers so that they can impart the most useful and up-to-date information to students.

Between myself, Diane Fisher and the South Midlands Careers Hub team, 66 local employers signed up to the event and 47 attended: a pretty good turnout for the first event of its kind on a very snowy day!

Mr Strickland, Principal, The Duston School

I understand the importance of the transformative power of a solid careers programme for our pupils: it can be life changing. So, when Diane Fisher came to me to see if we could carve out some time in the CPD schedule for a careers event with local employers, I was keen to support her to make it happen. It was an opportunity for our staff to get some real-world insight into career pathways they might not know about. It would allow them to broaden their horizons, which in turn would expand our students’ opportunities and strengthen links with the local employment community.

Each school has its own unique opportunities and challenges due to its location and demographics. We’re fortunate to have excellent and highly supportive local employers in the Northamptonshire area. Our school demographic is 70% white British, and a large cohort of our parents are tradespeople or have family businesses. They sometimes have a limited view of what’s possible in terms of career options for their children, thinking they’ll take over the family business and not always being open to other ideas. That’s why it’s even more vital for our teachers to have up-to-date information on current career pathways to impart knowledge to our parents.

The event was a great success, but more importantly it created lasting connections beyond the morning itself – relationships with people outside of the school who will help further develop our careers programme through talks, interviews, mentoring and work experience opportunities.

I would encourage others to give it a go!

Read about the updated Benchmark 2: Learning from Career and Labour Market Information here and the updated Benchmark 4: Linking Curriculum Learning to Careers here.

Both are explored in full in section 4 of the Good Career Guidance: The Next Ten Years report.