Inspiring the Future
Inspiring the Future
is a new free service run by the charity, Education and
Employers Taskforce which aims to get 100,000 people from all
sectors and professions volunteering to go into state schools and
colleges to talk about their jobs, careers, and the education
routes they took.
Everyone from CEOs to apprentices can
volunteer for
Inspiring the Future. Recent graduates,
school leavers and people in the early stages of their career can
be inspirational to teenagers - being close in age they are easy to
relate to; while senior staff have a wealth of knowledge and
experience to share.
Talking with young people in a school or
college can make a real difference to their perceptions of what
jobs are available, and it may inspire them to consider options
that they had previously never thought about. Talking to working
professionals can also help them get a realistic view on the
different routes into jobs and careers, and the current labour
market.
The intention is to get young people to
produce short videos of people talking about their jobs and to
upload these via their teacher to create a massive free
on-line video library of thousands of people talking about
thousands of jobs. The
Taskforce will coordinate this project working with a range of
partners. A regional and national schools competition is
currently being
planned. For more information and to sign
up: http://www.inspiringthefuture.org/
Why Inspiring the Future is
needed
To give young
people:
· better career
insights from working professionals
· face-to-face
access to employers
· access to
mentors
· access to work
experience
· opportunity to
talk to neutral adults about their aspirations and ideas
To give
teachers:
· contact with
employers and the opportunity to develop sustainable
relationships
· access to
employers to help with careers information, advice and guidance
(IAG)
· access to a pool
of potential school governors
· employee
volunteers for enterprise activities, mentoring and a range of
roles
To give
employees:
· local
volunteering opportunities with young people
· the chance to
develop their personal and communication skills
· the chance to
connect with and support the next generation of potential
workers
To give employers:
· Excellent staff
development opportunities, especially for younger staff looking to
improve personal effectiveness/communication
· An effective
means of supporting corporate responsibility and long-term
recruitment objectives
· a gateway to
working sustainably with schools and colleges, across the country,
across a wide range of activities that support learning,
progression and institutional performance
· A 'live' resource
'owned' by the employer, with monthly management information
provided on the key activities of employee volunteers
Demand is there from young
people
Research by
Deloitte in 2010 found 95% of young people said that they 'would
like employers to be more involved in providing advice and guidance
about careers and jobs'. There is real demand from schools -
only 2 out of 10 schools find it easy to get employee volunteers to
give careers talks. The transition from education to work has been
getting harder in recent years. Even at this time of record youth
unemployment the penalty for a wrong careers decision grows
greater.
Restructuring of careers
provision
The Coalition Government is undertaking a major restructuring of
careers provision and planning to introduce an new National All-Age
Careers Service from spring 2012 onwards. In future, schools
will be responsible for providing careers guidance themselves and
many local authorities have already announced that they will be
downsizing or closing their career services.
This will means a transition period when the careers guidance
available to young people will be significantly reduced. It
will also mean that schools will need assistance if they are going
to provide high quality impartial advice. In this context, it is
more important than ever for employers to consider how to help
young people make informed decisions about their futures.
This is especially important to the 1.9 million children who
live in workless households. Such children lack the family
connections that can provide information and encouragement to help
young people navigate their way through the educational system into
work of choice.
For further information read: Rationale and Research
Speakers for Schools
Launched the week of 10 October 2011 is Speakers for
Schools. Please visit: www.speakersforschools.org
Read about 25 high profile speakers including Martha Lane Fox,
George Alagiah, Baroness (Shriti) Vadera and Robert Peston,
visiting schools and colleges for the launch week via our press release.