This study used a randomised control trial to investigate whether attending just three career talks by employee volunteers had an impact on students’ GCSE results, the hours they planned to spend revising for these exams, their attitudes towards learning, and confidence in their career prospects. Around 650 Year 11 students from five schools took part in the trial and were split into an intervention group that attended three 20 to 30-minute careers talks and a control group that did not attend any.

The results indicate small but consistent improvements in the attitudes of the intervention group, and a ‘positive and statistically significant’ relationship between revision hours and career talks. The results also reveal an indicative, direct link between career talks and the intervention group outperforming their predicted GCSE results relative to the control group.

A research team led by Professor (Emeritus) Prue Huddleston of the University of Warwick’s Centre for Education Studies carried out the study, which included a literature review, followed by observations and interviews at five case study organisations and focus group work.

The study concludes that while it is vital to prepare students to move into the world beyond education, how this is done is just as important as to whether it is done at all; that to be effective, such education needs to be integral to the curriculum, not a ‘nice to have’ add-on; that financial constraints are holding back educators from doing more to develop the know-how, attitudes which young people need to succeed in work and other parts of their lives; that even with limited resources, schools would be more likely to prioritise commercial education if it became part of a statutory personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) curriculum; and that methods used to assess traditional learning are not always appropriate for programmes designed to develop enterprise and employability.

needed for the workplace but that delivery is patchy and a co-ordinated approach is now needed to help young adults make a successful transition from education to work.

Based on case studies which show how design, content, context and teaching methods can be part of a shift from ‘more’ to ‘better’. With recommendations for employers, educators and policy-makers. Lost in Transition is a summary of research conducted in 2017 by Trisha Fettes entitled ‘Putting Skills to Work’.

The research also enabled the identification of wider policy implications in relation to 14-19 education, early specialisation in a vocational field and other issues relating to further education, employer engagement, commercial education, skills development and social mobility. The research was co-funded with the Edge Foundation.

CET summarised key findings in its publication ‘Lessons From Employer Led Learning’. The full evaluation was published by The Edge Foundation (February 2020).

The study also explores the feasibility of evaluating such programmes, including tracking participants into the labour market. A summary of this report, Lost in Transition, was produced by CET in 2018 and is available on this website.

The study concludes that apprenticeships suffer from an image problem due to a shortage of knowledge and information and that support should be provided to schools and colleges to further raise the confidence of school staff in providing advice to interested students. It also advocates for more apprenticeship events involving employers; for schools and colleges should do more to engage parents; and for awareness of apprenticeships to be raised at a younger age. It also notes that schools and colleges should do more to challenge gender stereotypes and broaden the aspirations of young women who are thinking about apprenticeships.

Importantly, the study identifies attitudes and experiences (‘indicators’) which schools can influence in order to better prepare their young people for adult working life. The approach adopted is primarily designed to allow schools to identify students requiring greater levels of support to help them become well prepared.

A questionnaire and scoring system was developed resulting in a toolkit which has been designed to be comprehensive – relevant to students at all attainment levels – by making use of robust UK longitudinal data which compares students of similar characteristics (for example, socio-economic background, geographical area, attainment levels) to identify which factors which make a difference to economic outcomes (earnings and employment) in later life. It is available from the Education and Employers website.

The survey findings highlight that children from an early age often have some sophisticated and thought through ideas about who they want to become when they grow up. They also show that from a young age children often stereotype jobs according to gender and their career choices are based on these assumptions with the majority of boys wanting to be sportsmen and girls wanting to be teachers. Additionally, children’s career aspirations are most influenced by who they know – their parents and friends of parents and the TV and media. Worryingly, less than 1% of children have heard about the jobs through people from the world of work coming to their school. And the survey shows clearly for the first time that this is a global issue.

This two-year project by Karen Evans, David Guile and Judy Harris and its accompanying Book of Exemplars have been produced to encourage curriculum development teams to draw upon the research and think through, carefully and in depth, the purposes and processes involved in work-based learning.

This two-day event, focussed on employer engagement in education and training and how it relates to the Government’s plans for social mobility improvement, the implementation of its Industrial Strategy and improving the flow of skills into the labour market post Brexit.
The Education and Employers website holds comprehensive information on this conference with videos and short interviews.

You can read a blog about the event by writer Anat Arkin, here: https://thecet.org/getting-through-hard-times/

These are: the Research Review Group (RRG); Early Career Researchers Network; Skills Shortages Analysis Group; Vocational Philosophy Research Network; Project Based Learning International Champions Network; Innovative Higher Education Network; Island Education Network and the UK Policy Learning Network

In 2019 the Lecture was delivered by Mme. Christine Lagarde who was then Chair and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. CET funded the Tacitus Lecture between 2005 and 2019.

This two-day event, focussed on employer engagement in education and training and how it relates to the Government’s plans for social mobility improvement, the implementation of its Industrial Strategy and improving the flow of skills into the labour market post Brexit.
The Education and Employers website holds comprehensive information on this conference with videos and short interviews.