Getting it right for young people starting out on their careers....

Following on from National Apprenticeship Week earlier this month, and also having just caught up on watching the latest instalment of “Growing up Gifted” (the excellent BBC series following 6 extremely gifted teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds over a number of years of their secondary education), I’ve found I’ve been reflecting on what all young people need in place to make a really good start on their career track after school. That start may entail traditional academic or professional education, apprenticeships or other routes to success in their chosen area, but if we get it right for young people, the resulting opening up of choices, and in some cases the much-needed social mobility, that follows, can be totally life changing.

This is such an important issue for us to get right as a society, whether you are coming from a perspective of what our country and economy needs, or from a belief in the intrinsic importance of each individual achieving their potential, or indeed both. Many adults are able to correct their career path or go back to study later in life, but some are not, and even those that do often wish they had been better supported to get it right first time.

We are very good (or at least many more enlightened organisations now are) at working out exactly what coaching and development our senior staff need, and give them the time, space and support to reflect on where they are going. We are also prepared to invest large sums of money in that pursuit, seeing it as a good investment for both the individual, the organisation, and even society. But in many cases, we seem far less keen to invest in this in-depth way in our young people at the start of their career journeys. This is arguably when the need for that intervention for it is far greater, and the consequences of not getting that input, or not getting it at the right time are potentially far more serious and life defining.

I’ve recently had the privilege to talk to a number of people from several organisations working hard in this area. One who is working hard to offer some of the elements of the career coaching and personal development support that is typically offered only to senior executives to those aged 16-21 as they approach choices for university or further study. Two others are working in large corporates and charities respectively, to make high quality apprenticeships available, and attractive, to a wider group of young (and sometimes slightly older!) people wanting to make a start in a challenging and rewarding career, including those typically finding it hard to access these routes.

It has made me reflect on how tremendously fortunate I was at the stage lots of these young people are at. My parents challenged me to have high expectations for myself, gave me the support, encouragement and mentoring I needed to think through all my options, and to follow through on those expectations. These messages were also strongly reinforced by my school and my other networks. Sadly, as we know, not all our young people are this fortunate.

What has really struck me is that whilst there are certainly lots of choices and opportunities for further education and training open to young people now, maybe more than ever, and schemes such as the new apprenticeships initiatives and the growth in university places are positive moves in this direction, these miss a key point. The reality is that even those with strong natural ability are often either are often not fully aware of the opportunities, fundamentally misunderstand them, have tragically low ambitions about their ability to access them, or simply lack the skills or support to know how to begin to explore or take full advantage of them.

This doesn’t even apply solely to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. As a coach I have been approached a number of times by capable and engaged parents to work with their sons or daughters on helping them work through their options and become more ‘job ready’ and whilst they are fortunate enough to have parents who at least see there is a gap to fill (and means to help them fill it), they are often not yet fully armed to take their decisions either.

This is also not to criticise schools and their careers provision, where the Gatsby benchmarks now set a high bar of quality for careers guidance. However, in reality the very significant constraints of time and funding in state schools often mean these laudable aims for all cannot realistically be delivered in the way which allows the significant time to be invested, at an early enough stage in those children who desperately need the additional support. I would also argue they also focus on helping students make detailed career choices, assuming a certain level of very basic ‘job- readiness’, or even “decision making readiness’ is already in place in young people. In my experience this is exactly what many young people are missing.

At the same time, there is reason to be hopeful - there are pockets of great, inspiring practice happening, (or at least starting to happen!). As an example, I have recently become aware of the ‘Apprenticeship Ready’ programme (‘MARS’ https://www.instructus.org) currently being piloted by the education and training charity Instructus at Moulton School & Science College local to me. The programme is spread over 3-4 months with personal development/behaviour, skills and work experience training all being covered. The overall aim is closing that gap between education and work so that the young people concerned are in a strong position to take advantage of apprenticeship or other training opportunities when they arise. I hope that once the pilot has been evaluated, the lessons learnt can support a larger group of young people across the country.

Young people taking part in the Instructus MARS pilot

But the challenge of widening out schemes like this and delivering them on a more coordinated national scale is very significant. I watch this space with great interest, and hope to be involved in the wider solutions over time, but in the meantime, I challenge any of you working in education, training or skills, or who are employers yourselves, to do what you can

locally to consider how we ensure all young people have appropriate support to:

· Develop appropriately high expectations for themselves, and build their self-confidence;

· Get themselves ‘decision-ready’ in terms of knowledge and self-awareness;

· Explore their key skills and what their life-goals might be, and consider what training or careers make a good match for these;

· Get themselves ‘job-ready’, ‘apprenticeship-ready’ or ‘university-ready’ in terms of skills and

behaviours;

· Prepare well for applications and selection processes.

We and they will all benefit it we get this important job right!