News

Careers and Employability

Hot on the heels of our most recent Briefing on Employability and Enterprise there have been a number of related announcements.

This week the Creative Industries Federation announced that one of their three priority areas for the next year will be Creative Careers and Skills which is great news. Their key actions will be:

• Develop and launch a Creative Careers Campaign
• Signpost successful careers material and guidance and develop a Creative Industries Toolkit for schools;
• Convene creative businesses and entrepreneurs together with young people to provide practical guidance from industry itself;
• Make the case to government on the value of creative jobs and advocate the importance of creative and technical skills;
• Publish a report on diversity and inclusion, calling on the sector to act on issues that are of highest concern to those working in and for our creative industries.

The other two priorities are Entrepreneurship and Growth, and EU and International. Read more about how they will deliver these areas on their website.

Careers in theatre

Inspiring Future Theatre aims to showcase to young people the range of careers available in theatre, and strengthen connections between schools and their local theatres. Inspiring the Future UK Theatre and Society of London Theatre (SOLT)  want to recruit industry ambassadors who will be matched with schools to take part in information events. SOLT President Kenny Wax said:

‘Our goal is to sign up 1,000 Ambassadors from across the industry, to include technicians, designers, actors, creatives and administrators – with particular emphasis on roles behind the curtain – to commit to visit a local school once a year to talk about what they do – to open the eyes of children and inspire them to consider a role in the theatre.’

Inspiring the Future of Theatre will be officially launched on 11 July 2018.

Schools career advice – new requirements

In December the Department for Education published its Careers Strategy, followed in January by the statutory requirements to deliver the strategy. From September 2018 secondary schools, colleges and PRUs will have to meet a number of new requirements including publishing details of their careers programmes and having a named careers leader.

All schools are also required to start using the eight Gatsby benchmarks of good careers guidance. By the end of 2020 all schools must meet all eight benchmarks as well as offer every pupil at least seven ‘meaningful encounters’ with employers over their school career.

The eight Gatsby benchmarks of Good Career Guidance

1. A stable careers programme
   2. Learning from career and labour market information
   3. Addressing the needs of each pupil
   4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
   5. Encounters with employers and employees
   6. Experiences of workplaces
   7. Encounters with further and higher education
   8. Personal guidance

The Careers and Enterprise Company has been tasked and funded to help schools deliver on these eight areas, and has guidance on its website.

Enterprise Advisor network

The above work is a huge task for schools to deliver. To help them the Enterprise Advisor Network is being established. It is comprised of volunteer business people in senior roles, supported colleagues from the Local Enterprise Partnerships, with funding from the Careers and Enterprise Company.

An Enterprise Advisor will be paired with a school to help make links with employers and strategically plan activity to deliver the Gatsby Benchmarks.

Become an Enterprise Advisor

Volunteers from the creative industries are needed to work with schools. We need schools to understand the range of jobs in the creative sector, and the qualifications and skills young people need to develop to work in them. It is vitally important that young people study arts subjects so they can progress in to creative careers.

Employment in the creative sector has grown 25% since 2011, and one in 11 jobs are in the creative economy. In 2016, the sector contributed £91.8bn gross value added (GVA) to the economy –  bigger than the automotive, life sciences, aerospace, oil and gas sectors combined.

Find out more on the Careers and Enterprise Company’s website or get in touch with your local LEP. As a guide for how much time you would need to volunteer we are told being an Enterprise Advisor takes less time than being a school governor. 

This month’s advocates

Kevin Courtney, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, used his speech at the NUT’s conference at the start of April to call for a fundamental change in our education system, saying: 'This generation deserves a wide education that includes arts as well as the sciences, at least as much as previous generations deserved it.’

Rufus Norris was interviewed by the Times about the value of arts education. You can read the piece ‘A school without five minutes of arts can get a good Ofsted rating’ on the Times website (paywall).

Michael Rosen writing in the Guardian criticised the need to focus on rote learning in schools to pass tests, in contrast to the skills of creativity and team-working that business says young people need to be employable.

At the Big Arts and Education Debate hosted by the Birmingham Rep on 20 April, the playwright James Graham said: 'Arts education is now the most important conversation we can be having as an industry' and colleagues from across education and the arts used the event to talk about the challenges facing arts in schools, the ways in which we could make the case for the value of arts to children and young people and to our national life and economy, and how we can work to create a more diverse workforce. Read the day’s tweets using the hashtag #TheBigArtsEdDebate.

Seen on Twitter this month

Children who had music lessons showed significant cognitive improvements compared with other children, performing better on tests for inhibition, planning & verbal intelligence.

New longitudinal neuroscience research from Holland shows that music lessons significantly improve primary school children’s cognitive skills and academic performance and visual arts lessons significantly improve children’s visual and spatial memory. Read in Science Daily.

Music education should be inclusive. So where are the disabled teachers? Read.

Why belonging and being creative are essential requirements for early learning. Read.

The Department for Education is recruiting panel members to develop the outline content of the T-Level in Creative and Design.

The Labour Party will hold a consultation on its plans for a 'National Education Service'.

Launch of apprenticeship levy transfer limited to just one receiving employer. Read.