Skills Archives - Page 20 of 28 - North East Local Enterprise Partnership

The North East man helping to transform the quality of careers education in schools and colleges across the region has been named Career Educator of the Year at the prestigious Career Development Institute UK Career Development Awards.

Ryan Gibson, Facilitator for the Career Benchmarks Pilot at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, was awarded the title in recognition of his work with the Gatsby Foundation and the delivery of the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot to 16 schools and colleges across the North East.

Designed to improve students’ transition from school to the world of work, the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks provide a clear framework for schools and colleges to deliver effective and quality careers education. Students leave school with the ability to make educated choices about their future career and the skills local employers demand. The programme has been praised by Robert Halfon MP, Minister of State at the Department for Education, and is expected to form part of new statutory guidance for schools in delivering careers advice.
Ryan said:

It’s an honour to be named Career Educator of the Year but I haven’t achieved this on my own.

As well as the team at the North East LEP, we have collaborated with partners across the region who share our ambition to ensure children and young people have access to the best possible careers advice; allowing them to make educated and informed choices about their future.

We’ve worked in collaboration with the education and business sectors, as well as colleagues in local government, to ensure a joined up approach that delivers real results.

The Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot has been a huge success in our 16 partner schools and colleges and we plan to make the make the programme available to every secondary school and college in the region. The North East LEP is also looking into expanding the scheme to include Primary schools.

The Government has recognised the value and importance of the work taking place in the North East LEP region and that’s something we’re extremely proud of.

The Career Development Institute UK Career Development Awards showcase and celebrate the very best UK-wide practice in career development. Ryan was recognised as part of the individual best-practice awards.
Michelle Rainbow, Skills for Business Manager at the North East LEP, said:

Ryan is hugely deserving of this award.
He’s led the delivery of the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot in the North East and has been a huge champion for the region, helping position us as innovators in careers education.

As part of Ryan’s role at the North East LEP he has hosted Government visits from Robert Halfon MP, Minister of State at the Department for Education, and spoken at numerous industry events about the success of the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot.

Having previously led careers education and employer engagement for St Joseph’s Catholic Academy in Hebburn, where he successfully reduced NEETs (not in education, employment, or training) to zero, Ryan joined the North East LEP in 2015 to lead the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot. His work has been recognised by the Department for Education as ‘transformational’.

Find out more about the Career Benchmarks pilot.

More than 150 people from the worlds of education, business and academia came together at Dame Allan’s School in Newcastle last week, to discuss ways of embedding careers guidance within the curriculum.

Over 20 schools and colleges, 40 employers and all five of the region’s universities were represented. We talked to two of the attendees – Marie Jobson from Churchill Community College and Catherine Boland from printed.com – to find out what happened.

Marie Jobson, Post-16 Co-ordinator at Churchill Community College, North Tyneside

My role is to be the careers lead at Churchill Community College and I attended the event with two of my colleagues who are both teaching staff. My aim was to build links with people who might be able to support the work experience offer for our students and also to come away with ideas to help us work towards the Gatsby Foundation’s Good Career Guidance Benchmarks.

I felt that I achieved both these aims and more; it was an awesome morning and I learnt so much. As a result of the event I came away with a really useful lesson plan to help students understand career options and how different jobs can be suited to people’s skills and personality types. We could never have come up with this resource without the input of the various people around the table who were from a range of sectors, with different skills and experience.

The lesson plan supports us in working towards at least three of the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks and I will be embedding this new resource into my work with our year 10s in the next few months.

The event was audacious in scale and the buzz was incredible. The fact that 150 people from universities, employers and schools all came together was amazing and really dynamic.

Catherine Boland, HR Manager at printed.com

I’m a National Careers Week Ambassador and I work closely with schools on a number of projects linked with the Career Benchmarks – for example, I’ve recently worked with Churchill Community College and some of their year 12 students, piloting a new way of creating meaningful work experience for young people.

I’m also an Enterprise Adviser as part of the North East LEP’s Enterprise Adviser programme, and am happy to discuss work experience with any schools, colleges or businesses looking to offer a programme.

We want to build a talent pipeline and tap into the workforce of the future, showcase our business to young people and also make sure that we provide a good experience when they are with us, including an understanding of all the different pathways into a career in printed.com.

Employers should be willing to support young people’s journey and transition from school into the workplace and there’s a business benefit including employee engagement in linking with schools and colleges. However, I know that lots of employers feel challenged when reaching out to schools and starting to build those relationships.

This was a brilliant event to build collaboration around how we can work together to support careers guidance in our schools and build on the good work that’s already being done through the Gatsby Benchmarks.

There was a lot of enthusiasm and talk of further collaboration and I will definitely attend similar events in the future.

The founder of a burgeoning biometric company based in Newcastle upon Tyne is the latest regional business leader to join the North East Local Enterprise Partnership’s (LEP’s) Enterprise Adviser initiative.

Shaun Oakes, managing director of ievo (www.ievoreader.com), will work with staff and pupils at The Hermitage Academy, Chester le Street, to improve careers education and support the Academy in working towards the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks, a national pilot scheme led by the North East LEP to improve the quality of careers advice in schools and colleges.

Working strategically with senior leaders at The Hermitage Academy to shape the quality of careers provision, Shaun joins a long list of leading North East business people who have become Enterprise Advisers.

Shaun Oakes, managing director of ievo, said:

As a local employer I know there is a wealth of talent in the North East and what we’re hoping to achieve through the partnership with The Hermitage Academy is for students to gain an understanding of the type of skills employers in our region are looking for.

It’s important students know that the subject choices they make in school have a direct impact on their chosen career path. We’ll be using our own management team at ievo as case studies to demonstrate pathways into various jobs, from marketing and computing to sales and project management.

Practical sessions on interview skills and cover letter writing will help students understand it’s not just academic achievements businesses are looking for. We’ll be championing the importance of work experience and apprenticeships as really valuable routes to employment.

Andrea Charlton, careers lead for The Hermitage Academy said:

This is an exciting opportunity for students at The Hermitage Academy. We place a high value on showing them the importance of the subjects they study and how they link to real life areas of work. Working with ievo will provide students with a great insight into the many areas of careers guidance.

Lindsey Peek, Enterprise Coordinator at the North East LEP said:

We’re delighted to be working with ievo and The Hermitage Academy on our Enterprise Adviser initiative. Shaun is passionate about supporting careers education and, working in partnership with the team at The Hermitage Academy, there is already a lot of exciting work taking place to improve provision and support students to make better, more informed choices, about their future careers.

Enterprise Advisers bridge the gap between business and education, ensuring schools and colleges provide the best possible careers advice and students have an excellent understanding of the opportunities available to them in the North East.

The initiative also supports schools and colleges in delivering the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks; eight clearly defined benchmarks for high quality and effective careers guidance. The pilot in the North East LEP region has proved so successful the benchmarks are expected to form part of Government’s new statutory guidance for schools in delivering careers advice. The North East LEP also hopes to expand the scheme to include primary schools.

The North East LEP’s Enterprise Adviser programme has been running since December 2015. Part of a national initiative developed by The Careers and Enterprise Company, Enterprise Advisers work in partnership with enterprise coordinators to support schools and colleges to navigate the range of possible employer interactions and to help them create a whole school strategy for careers, enterprise and employer engagement.

Michelle Rainbow, the North East LEP’s skills for business manager, discusses the government’s ‘Fuller Working Lives’ strategy. The strategy encourages employers to boost their numbers of older workers and to make sure that those in our workforce who are older are supported, whether they want to pursue a new direction or continue in their career.

We know that in the UK, there are more people aged 50 and over in employment than ever before and by 2020 over 50s will make up almost a third of the working age population.

However, we also know that significant numbers of people face issues such as redundancy, health problems and caring responsibilities that force them to leave the workforce before retirement age.

This isn’t just a problem for the people who are personally affected – who can suffer health, wellbeing and financial issues as a result – but for the economy as a whole. After all, it means we’re missing out on the skills people could bring to our workplaces, and as the population grows older we need to make sure we’re equipped to deal with the changes this brings.

In the North East we have one of the lowest employment rates in the country for those aged 50 and over – 63.7% – and this poses a real challenge.

How can we take positive action to support both employers and employees? How should we be reskilling and upskilling older workers and helping to retain these valuable and experienced employees in the North East workforce?

The government’s Fuller Working Lives initiative focuses on ‘the three R’s’: retain, retrain and recruit.

Retain. We can retain over 50s in the workplace by planning effectively for an ageing workforce . We are already working with employers in the region to investigate how we can best retain the skills and experience of older workers in our region’s economy.

Retrain. Older workers are often overlooked when it comes to workplace training. However, when you consider the fact that someone aged 50 could easily stay with their employer for another 15 years or more, there’s a clear case for investing in their development, to the benefit of both the individual and the employer.

Recruit. When it comes to recruitment, age discrimination, whether conscious or unconscious, can be a barrier for older people who are seeking work. It can also mean that employers are missing out on the skills and experience of an entire section of the workforce.

We’ve already created a task and finish group composed of business leaders, local authorities and policy makers to tackle the issues raised in the Fuller Working Lives strategy here in the North East. We’ll be supporting employers to make our workplaces fit for a changing workforce and we’ll be looking at how we can make sure that people of all ages have the opportunity to develop their skills.

Our aim is to create more and better jobs for people in the North East and that includes the over 50s – a crucial part of the North East economy.

To find out more about government plans to support the 50+ workforce, visit the .gov.uk website.

SCHOOLS NorthEast, the first & only UK regional network of schools, hosts its Regional Governance Conference on Thursday 30 March at Durham County Cricket Club, Chester-le-Street.

Tracey Booth MBE, Chair of Governors at Churchill Community College, shares her thoughts on school governance and how schools across the North East can work together to improve opportunities for young people.

To put it simply, school governance is about implementing a clear set of structures and processes that ensure we’re working in the best interest of our students. As school governors we have a duty to ensure that, in partnership with the leadership team, we’re working towards better outcomes and opportunities for each individual student.

School governance and school management is not the same thing but they can often be confused. School governors have a holistic view of the organisation and it’s our role to set out the vision for the school and agree the strategic objectives.

One of the ways we do this is using data, as this can give us an accurate picture of how the school, teachers and students are performing. It’s also our role to question the data and make sure it matches with what we’re seeing on the ground. A huge part of good school governance is listening to what teachers, students and parents are telling us.

There are specific qualities and skills I think make a good school governor, the most important one is a genuine passion to improve education for all children, regardless of their ability or background. I also think it’s important to gather a team of confident and knowledgeable people that will hold the school executive team to task and ask the difficult questions that will lead change.

It might come as a surprise to many people but having experience of working in the education sector is not a requirement to be a school governor. In fact many people join from other areas of industry. The most important factor is having the skills and time that will ultimately benefit the students.

This is an area that will be discussed at length at the SCHOOLS North East regional governance conference in March. How do we attract and retain good school governors? The key is finding people with integrity that will challenge schools on their performance. The goal is to raise standards and improve opportunities for students, not just in school, but in their working lives too.

Like any area of industry we have challenges to face. These range from finance to the wider education landscape but for me, recruitment is paramount. Governing bodies should reflect the student population and that’s why it’s so important we have a varied and diverse school governing body that’s representative of the local community. New people bring fresh ideas and that’s really important.

Another way we can improve school governance across the board is by working in collaboration. There are always areas for improvement and that’s why institutions that are rated outstanding by Ofsted continue to find ways to better themselves. Sharing ideas and best practice means we can all look at ways of improving our schools.

Of course school governance isn’t just about looking after students in school. We have a duty to ensure they are ready for the world of work and that’s why it has an important role to play in the wider economic landscape. Students need to make informed and educated choices about their future and be equipped with the skills industry demands.

That’s why initiatives like the North East LEP’s Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot are so important. I know it’s made a huge difference at Churchill Community College where I’m chair of governors. It’s enabled us to engage with employers in the region to understand what skills businesses need and bring that knowledge into our school.

When we began this work we assessed ourselves as meeting three of the eightbenchmarks because they talked about ‘all and every child’. We are about to reassess at eight out of eight. As the pilot comes to an end this year we know we are in a better place to prepare young people for the world of work. We will now seek to embed this work and support other governing bodies to do the same.

We also use the North Tyneside Learning Trust to support awareness of careers from early years through to age 18 as part of our ‘World of Work’ programme, which supports 45 schools in North Tyneside with our trust governors as advocates. This draws in a wide range of employers and experiences of work for our young people.

We see how important it is to support student aspiration towards high skill, high wage employment wherever we can. We use labour market information to help young people make informed choices of career routes. We have a responsibility to drive down Not in Education, Employment, or Training figures to zero and ensure young people stay in these career routes for three years after leaving us. We link in employer governors through our trust network to inspire the next generation of workers.

I’ve spent 15 years as a school governor and the reason I do it is to make sure young people in my community have the best possible chance in life. It’s what motivates me everyday.

By Tracey Booth MBE
Chair of Governors at Churchill Community College

The SCHOOLS NorthEast Regional Governance Conference takes place on Thursday 30 March at Durham County Cricket Club, Chester-le-Street. For more information about the conference and SCHOOLS NorthEast, visit www.schoolsnortheast.com

Ryan Gibson is facilitator for the national Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot, taking place in the North East LEP area. Earlier this month the North East LEP was one of a select number of organisations and individuals invited by the Department for Education to attend a speech by the apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon at Westminster Academy in London. During the speech, the minister outlined his vision for careers and emphasised the importance of high quality careers guidance for young people.

Ryan told us more about the speech and what it means for careers education:

The Career Benchmarks pilot started in 2015 and since then I’ve been really proud of what schools in the North East have achieved. The Benchmarks offer a tangible framework for improving careers guidance in schools, and I’ve received lots of feedback about how workable they are in day-to-day school life.

Robert Halfon’s speech placed careers as high priority for schools. Key points of his speech, which align very closely to the work we’re delivering in the pilot, included:

The importance of lifelong careers

The need to transform careers and bring greater coherence to provision

The need for a careers system that works for everyone, building on what works, and expanding both the quantity and quality of careers provision across the country

Careers guidance should lead to meaningful, skilled employment and will be central to the new industrial strategy and future productivity

He is committed to publishing a comprehensive strategy for all ages later this year.

Most importantly, he stated that ‘all schools and colleges’ should be encouraged to use the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks framework. Happily, this shows that our work to date has paid off – demonstrating best practice and a practical framework that schools can work within.

In conversation with Michelle Rainbow, North East LEP skills for business manager, after the speech, Halfon commented that the North East is ‘leading the way’ in careers education – something I know all of our 16 participating schools and colleges will be delighted to hear. This was reinforced by ‘inspirational’ visits he’d taken at Churchill Community College and Gateshead College over recent months.

The national pilot’s progress is outstanding, particularly the collaboration, innovation and pioneering thinking it is inspiring between education providers, businesses and young people. We are honoured and excited to have the opportunity to work with colleagues at the Department for Education to ensure that the future careers strategy does indeed work for everyone.

The North East LEP will continue to lead this work, both across the region and the country. We will continue to work with the minister and the department to shape and influence future careers strategy, based on the excellent practices that the Benchmarks are inspiring in schools, colleges and businesses across the region.

In addition to the Good Careers Guidance Benchmarks pilot, the North East LEP is also leading the successful Enterprise Adviser scheme, pairing industry leaders with senior management teams in schools to help shape careers guidance for pupils. There are now more than 70 senior business leaders signed up from across the North East to support schools and colleges strategically.

The North East is the only area of the UK to run both of these programmes – a model which is coming to be recognised as best practice – and our ambition is to make them available to each and every school in the region.

Find out more:

Enterprise Advisers

One of the North East’s leading businesswomen has joined the North East LEP’s Enterprise Adviser programme to support better quality careers education in the region’s secondary schools.

Giselle Stewart, Director of Corporate Affairs at video game company Ubisoft, is the latest North East business leader to join the programme, which sees business people from some of the North East’s most successful industries work strategically with senior leaders in secondary schools to shape the quality of careers provision.

The programme is designed to ensure school leavers are prepared for the world of work and have a good understanding of the employment opportunities available to them in the North East

Giselle Stewart said:

The games industry, and the creative and digital sector as a whole, is a huge growth area for the North East and it’s vital that we’re making young people aware of the opportunities available to them.

The business community must play an active role in supporting careers education in schools if we want to recruit staff with the right kind of skills. The North East LEP’s Enterprise Advisor programme is all about ensuring teachers and schools can support students to make informed and educated choices about their future.

I’m delighted to be involved as I’ve been a long time supporter of creating opportunities for young people to enter the industry. This is a great way for me, on behalf of the wider creative and digital sector, to make teachers, schools and students aware of the amazing career avenues available to them.

The volunteer role will see Gisele partnered with Ponteland Community Middle School in Newcastle. A total of 43 secondary schools have signed up to take part in the programme, reaching from Berwick to South Durham.

Awarded an OBE for services to the game industry in the 2015 New Year’s Honours list, Giselle has been a long time supporter of creating rewarding pathways for young people to enter the sector. In her role as Advisory Board member with the Next Gen Skills Academy, Giselle helped design a qualification for students aged 16+ looking to enter the games, VFX and animation industry. Delivered at Sunderland College, the course is now in its second year.

As well as being the current Chair of the Skills Council for Video Games at Creative Skillset, Giselle has recently been appointed Trustee for NE Futures, a new University Technical College (UTC) in Newcastle. Scheduled to open in 2018, the new UTC will focus on STEM subjects to feed the digital, tech and health sciences sector in the North East.

Giselle also sits on the Board of the new Creative Fuse NE project, which is run by all five of the North East’s universities, and the External Advisory Board of Durham University’s Computer Science Department.

Denis Heaney, Enterprise Coordinator at the North East LEP said:

Giselle is one of the most respected people working in the digital and technology sector today, not just here in the North East, but across the UK.

She has a wealth of experience as well as a personal interest in supporting development opportunities for young people. She’s exactly the type of person we want as an Enterprise Advisor.

The role demands someone with a good network and an excellent understanding of the local labour market, something Giselle has in spades.

The North East LEP’s Enterprise Advisor programme has been running since December 2015. Part of a national initiative developed by The Career and Enterprise Company, Enterprise Advisors work in partnership with Enterprise Co-ordinators to support schools and colleges to navigate the range of possible employer interactions and to help them create a whole school strategy for careers, enterprise and employer engagement.

David recently started working with the North East LEP Skills Team to help with the project management of the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot’s Innovation Fund.

Each of the 16 schools and colleges participating in the national Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot can bid for the Innovation Fund. This is money specifically set aside by the pilot funders, the Gatsby Foundation, to help them achieve the Benchmarks. The Skills Team tasked me with ensuring the Innovation Fund projects are completed within an acceptable timescale, and to measure and demonstrate overall impact.

This is a different area of work to my usual ‘day job’, however, the principle is still the same – tracking projects to ensure that they’re delivered on time, to cost and to quality. The schools all have a different approach when it comes to applying innovation to achieve the Benchmarks, and planning out the best way of monitoring progress and reporting has been really interesting so far.

The projects cover a range of different areas. Churchill Community College is implementing a ‘Career Zone’, with simulated employer sessions for years 7 and 8 pupils. Other schools are working together to improve the tracking of student information, known as ‘destination data’. Another project reaching a range of institutions is ‘Digital Encounters’; reviewing the use of digital media in the UK and how it can be applied for careers education.

In addition to measuring success, I’m also responsible for helping schools identify and resolve challenges. ‘Parental engagement’ has been reported as one of the most testing elements so far. Schools and colleges have worked together to plan an approach to resolving this, including involving parents early on, and providing as much communication as possible. The Innovation Fund has also supported a specific project focusing on supporting parents and carers as the key influencers in a young person’s career aspirations, and strategies that can be taken to maximise engagement.

The breadth of Innovation Fund projects demonstrates how many different elements there are that make up a successful careers programme. When this element of the pilot is finished, we’d like to see a successful compilation of activities that other schools in the UK can replicate, or learn from, when rolling out the Benchmarks themselves. A ‘lessons learned’ log will also help inform them. Ultimately, we’re working towards being able to demonstrate impact both in terms of return on investment and school results, crucial for getting buy-in from schools.

David will continue working with the pilot schools and colleges, with the output being a final report demonstrating the Innovation Fund’s impact and tangible ideas for other areas to implement.

Helping young people to fulfil their ambitions

I had the pleasure recently of representing the North East LEP as a keynote speaker at a Public Policy Exchange event in London on the theme of ‘helping young people to fulfil their ambitions: ensuring high quality careers guidance in schools and colleges’. This event was the conclusion of several events throughout October, November and December where I have been able to share the pioneering work the North East LEP is leading to support schools and colleges to implement good careers guidance for each and every student.

I have had the honour and privilege of delivering the keynote speech at the National Careers Education Summit 2016 with Sir John Holman, have addressed the National Careers Leaders and Advisers Conference in York with David Andrews, have spoken at the Talentino ‘Same but Different’ event in Reading, exploring how young people with special educational needs and disabilities can be supported to make progress and I have addressed the independent schools conference here in the North East.

Regardless of the event, I am always so impressed by the passion and dedication of everyone working in the wider careers landscape to ensure that all young people are fully supported to make informed decisions about their future and are appropriately prepared for their next stage, whether that be further or higher education, training, apprenticeships or directly into work.

The Public Policy Exchange was the final opportunity of 2016 to share the impact of the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot here in the North East, with an audience of education experts, schools, colleges and education policy professionals.

The North East LEP has led the implementation of the project, working with 16 schools and colleges and making the North East the first region in the country to pilot the Benchmarks, which aim to transform careers guidance in schools.

The eight Benchmarks of good careers guidance have been developed in partnership with the Gatsby Foundation and are expected to form part of the national statutory guidance for schools in delivering careers advice.

We’re now half way through the two year intensive project and it’s an opportunity to review the progress made so far, the impact the project has had on the schools and pupils involved and to share what we’ve learned with our peers.

Our evaluation of year one shows that it’s possible for schools and colleges to make significant progress in raising the quality of their careers guidance in just a year, with those participating in the project being significantly closer to providing ‘good career guidance’ than when we started.

25% of the schools and colleges now fully achieve five of the Benchmarks and, on average, schools have achieved two more Benchmarks during the year. This means that some of our schools and colleges in the North East are now already comparable with the best practice observed across the country.

The feedback from the teachers we’ve been working with has been overwhelmingly positive as well:

“Being involved in the national Career Benchmarks Pilot has been the most significant and transformative period of my career as a school leader. The Pilot has had more direct impact on my professional practice than any other CPD I have ever undertaken, including a Masters in Educational Leadership and Leadership Pathways with the National College.” Sarah Flanagan, Berwick Academy.

It’s become clear that the pilot is creating pathways for young people to move through the education system and into the world of work or further education. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, with each school applying the benchmarks to their own particular situation and the benchmarks providing the useful framework through which careers provision can be developed. In this sense, schools and colleges are also creating their own pathways towards achieving the high standard of the benchmarks

One of the key things I’ve taken away from the first year of the pilot is that we need to ensure we develop a robust provision that is timed to meets the individual needs of each and every young person – if we can do this across the region, and across the country, we’ll have not only a fit for purpose provision but a world class careers education system that we can all be truly proud of.

Ryan will be sharing learnings from the Gatsby Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot here in the North East with schools in Swindon, and inputting into the Schools North East Future Ready Conference in early 2017.

Category: Skills

North East LEP careers lead named Career Educator of the Year

Education, business and academia come together to shape careers guidance

North East LEP welcomes newest Enterprise Adviser

In conversation with Michelle Rainbow: ‘Fuller Working Lives’ for the over 50s

Tracey Booth MBE, Chair of Governors at Churchill Community College, shares her thoughts on school governance

In conversation with Ryan Gibson: reflecting on Robert Halfon’s recent speech on careers

Leading Figure in Games Industry joins LEP’s Enterprise Adviser Programme

In conversation with David Baines, Project Manager, Turner & Townsend

In conversation with Ryan Gibson, National Facilitator for the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks pilot

25% of the schools and colleges now fully achieve five of the Benchmarks and, on average, schools have achieved two more Benchmarks during the year. This means that some of our schools and colleges in the North East are now already comparable with the best practice observed across the country.