Case Study - Dyson Perrins CEC Academy

Dyson Perrins CEC Academy

• Date: March 2020
• District: Malvern Hills
• Event/Activity name: Careers Champions "Pilot" Scheme
• Numbers attended: 8

Activity aims

Following a request from the Worcestershire Careers Hub as one of their lead schools we agreed to undertake the Careers Champions "Pilot" programme within our school between October 2019 and March 2020.

We felt that this activity was one we would definitely like to trial as it would not only benefit our own students it could also enable other schools within the Careers Hub to benefit from our feedback and experience of running this pilot.

As a school, we welcomed the idea of ensuring that students had a voice in planning and implementing careers activities throughout the academic year and could potentially increase engagement across the entire student body and encourage more local employers to support our careers activities.

Activity details

We began the process by recruiting a total of 8 x Volunteers who would take up the role of "Careers Champions".  These students were from year groups 7, 8 and 9.

All of our volunteers were provided with a briefing on the role they would be undertaking within school and we openly discussed their thoughts about the skills they might need to fulfil the role.

The students first activity was to support the schools "Careers Week" which was due to take place in March 2020. The students participated in an initial planning session to discuss what they would like to see take place over the week.

 As a school we welcomed this valuable feedback as we had previously run this event during the previous year so were keen to use the student voice to make improvements to the week long series of activities and ensure that future activities are meaningful.

The students supported the activity to recruit local employer / speakers to ensure they were relevant to the outcomes they wished each activity to achieve.  

Our Careers Champions worked in pairs and ran a day during careers week each. They welcomed and briefed every employer ensuring they were looked after during their visit to our school.

Students then visited classes to obtain student feedback regarding the activities and fed this back to our Careers Leader, Enterprise Adviser and Enterprise Coordinator

Measure and Impact

The key impact through the introduction of our "Careers Champions" was the increased level of interaction our students had with the participating employers.

This interaction provided a natural platform where the students and employers could openly discuss careers education together. This discussion benefited both the employers and students alike.

The students understood why employers are looking to get more involved within the delivery of careers activities within schools and the employers were able to take on board the student feedback and adapt their approach to future delivery of similar activities within schools.

The introduction of Careers Champions in school meant that more pupils than ever before attended our lunchtime careers session.

This positive increase was due to the Careers Champions encouraging more of their peers to attend and students having the knowledge that the student body had a voice in the development and facilitation of the activities covered during these sessions.

The group of Careers Champions have also provided us (School Careers Team and our Enterprise Advisor) with some very valuable feedback.

This feedback has allowed us to make adaptations to the content of our activities and ensure that any future careers activities will continue to have students involved in the planning, facilitation and delivery.

Students will also play a much bigger role in contacting employers to ask for their support as we have noticed that employers are much more likely to say YES to a young person rather than an adult making the same request.

Quotes from participants

The feedback from Careers Champions was extremely positive, they liked being involved and having a real steer in careers education, they stated it made them feel that they were even more involved in the direction of their futures. They liked the responsibility of looking after the employers and having 'real' contact with them.

Listed below are some of responses to the careers week activities, including ideas for improvement. One "Careers champion" described the role as "Fun and enjoyed learning so much more about all the jobs that are available."

"The careers lessons they enjoyed the most were interactive and fun, they also liked it when subjects were focused on skills and communications. They found it valuable when they linked the skills you would use at GCSE to careers. "

"The visitors that had the most impact were ones who brought equipment and practical examples of their work, one engineer brought a large bungee rope he had designed and the health visitor brought blood pressure equipment."

"The posters on display should have pictures of the jobs so students would have a clearer understanding of who the employers were and may be more likely to visit."

"We could have 'guess the job' activities and mystery guests to make it a bit more fun and interactive."

"Have job descriptions displayed round the room and you have to match the visitor to the job description after hearing them talk."