Tag: improving skills

Home / improving skills / Page 3

North East LEP welcomes newest Enterprise Adviser

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.

Home / improving skills / Page 3

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

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

Home / improving skills / Page 3

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

Helping young people to fulfil their ambitions

public-policy-exchangeI 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.