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This report explores the hypothesis that engaging with the world of work through school-mediated employer engagement activities can enhance academic attainment by influencing and enhancing young people's positive attitudes towards education, career choices and themselves. Such engagement can potentially influence attainment over different time frames. Our trial specifically tested the potential to impact attainment over the short-term, looking at how extra career engagement in the months leading up to exams could impact the motivation to revise. The results also shed light on longer-term channels for impact, such as more positive attitudes towards education and shaping education pathway choices.

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This paper focuses on how generic skills can be developed to enable young adults to best utilise them in making transitions into the labour market. Drawing on the literature and a Commercial Education Trust study of practices which encourage employer engagement in skills development, it is argued that 'putting skills to work' is not automatic or unproblematic. It is not simply a matter of 'skills transfer', but a 'continuous, contextually-embedded and transformative process' during which individuals, supported by partners, learn how to recontextualise skills to suit different activities and environments. It may be tempting to distil employability into a list of so-called 'soft skills', but context matters. It requires more than that which can be taught in Education. Support is needed in the workplace through mentoring, for example, to help recruits acquire knowledge of workplace culture, norms and practices, situational understanding, and apply metacognitive strategies for bringing together this knowledge and a range of different skills and personal attributes in productive application. Further research is needed to explore the inter-relationships between skills supply, demand and utilisation, including ways in which employers can better recognise young recruits' skills and provide 'expansive' working environments that maximise their capabilities and potential for development.

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Building on new theories about the meaning of employability in the twenty-first century and the power of social and cultural capital in enabling access to economic opportunities, this book considers how employer engagement is delivered and explores the employment and attainment outcomes linked to participation. The book is a companion volume to 'Understanding employer engagement in education' (Mann, Stanley and Archer, 2014) [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 117.1548]. Introducing international policy, research and conceptual approaches, contributors to the volume illustrate the role of employer engagement within schooling and the life courses of young people. The book considers employer engagement within economic and educational contexts and its delivery and impact from a global perspective. The work explores strategic approaches to the engagement of employers in education and concludes with a discussion of the implications for policy, practice and future research.

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The contents are as follows: Preface / Andreas Schleicher; Introduction / Anthony Mann; 'Employers at the heart of the system?': the role of employers in qualification development / Prue Huddleston and Andrea Laczik; Investigating how benefits of an industry-school partnership vary between industry sectors / Kerry Lee, Fatima Abdulghani and John Hope; Who is getting prepared?: Year 11 students' views on careers education and work experience in English secondary schools / Julie Moote and Louise Archer; Competences, capabilities and capitals: conceptual paradigms in the educational-employment relationship / Michael Tomlinson; Socialised social capital?: the capacity of schools to use careers provision to compensate for social capital deficiencies among teenagers / Anthony Mann, Elnaz Kashefpakdel and Christian Percy; Tell it like it is: education and employer engagement, freelance and self-employment / Prue Huddleston and Heidi Ashton;

'Selling the dream': stakeholder perceptions of the translation of employability policy into university strategy / Roy Priest; 'My brother's football teammate's dad was a pathologist': serendipity and employer engagement in medical careers / Steven Jones, Anthony Mann, Elnaz Kashefpakdel and Rachael McKeown; Someone in your life who really believes in you: evidence and practice in employer mentoring / Tristram Hooley and Jonathan Boys; Aligning school to work: assessing the impact of employer engagement in young people's transition from education to work / Terence Hogarth and Lynn Gambin; Ethnographies of work and possible futures: new ways for young people to learn about work and choose a meaningful first career / Nancy Hoffman with Tobie Baker Wright and Mary Gatta; What impact can employer engagement have on student attitudes towards school and their academic achievement?: an analysis of OECD PISA data / Elnaz Kashefpakdel, Jordan Redhill and Matteo Schleicher; Young people in the labour market: how teenage employer engagement makes a difference to adult outcomes / Elnaz Kashefpakdel, Anthony Mann, Rachael McKeown and Jordan Redhill; Insiders or outsiders, who do you trust?: engaging employers in school-based career activities / Christian Percy and Elnaz Kashefpakdel; Between two worlds: linking education and employment / Simon Field; Conclusions: implications for policy, practice and research / Prue Huddleston. Show less

In May 2018 Teach First, a social enterprise which aims to address educational disadvantage in England and Wales, commissioned Education and Employers Research, London to undertake research into career-related learning (CRL) in primary schools. The term 'career-related learning' comprises of early childhood activities in primary schools designed to give children from an early age a wide range of experiences of and exposure to education, transitions and the world of work. The main purpose was to scope Teach First's future work on potential programmes in primary schools. This would complement existing arrangements already in place for the Careers and Employability Leadership Programme (CELP) in postprimary schools. Three research questions were examined: What is the taxonomy of teacher roles within a primary context with regards to CRL? What does success look like for a programme of career-related activities in the primary school setting? What does good/interesting careers provision look like in a primary school setting? The research involved an international literature review, including contributions from 12 OECD countries (Austria, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Netherlands, South Africa, Wales, United States), a qualitative online survey of primary schools complemented by in-depth case studies of good/interesting policies and practices, and an expert panel discussion. The findings within this report demonstrate the important role that senior leaders and teachers can play in embedding CRL in primary schools.

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Previous research by Education and Employers highlights the importance of good quality careers education on shaping outcomes later in life. The researchers found that teenagers who have a good understanding of what they need to do to achieve their career ambitions do a lot better economically later in life than their peers. However, teenagers from poorer homes are more likely to be uncertain about the qualifications they need to access their chosen career and get the skills they need. In this current report, the authors have reviewed international research to identify the interventions and approaches for which there is evidence of employers having a positive impact on young people's outcomes, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The authors identified four broad areas of employer engagement in education that could benefit young people: (1) boost young people's understanding of jobs and careers - broadening and raising career aspirations and supporting young people to make decisions on what to study, where to study, and how hard to study; (2) providing the knowledge and skills demanded by the contemporary labour market - helping young people to build the skills that modern workplaces need, such as creative problem-solving and team-working; (3) providing the knowledge and skills demanded for successful school-to-work transitions - giving young people relevant work experiences as well as practical insights into how recruitment processes work and contemporary workplaces operate; and (4) enriching education and underpinning pupil attainment - using employers to support teaching resources for the classroom and helping young people to see the connection between what they learn at school and employment outcomes.

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This chapter explores three influential approaches to the analysis of the relationship between education and employment, broadly framed in terms of individuals' lifetime employability. It offers an oversight of three dominant approaches which offer differing, yet also overlapping, accounts of employability. The concept of competences has been influential in explaining individuals' immediate labour market outcomes and has framed understandings of formal educational processes which potentially enhance learners' future employment outcomes. Competences are largely understood to be both supply-side driven and demand-orientated. Capabilities are understood to embody broader ability sets than those which merely reference occupational demands. Capitals can be derived from individuals' formal educational and socio-cultural experiences and impact on their subsequent educational and economic outcomes. The chapter concludes by considering how each approach maps onto the agency-structure dynamic which is central to any analysis of individuals' educational and subsequent employment experiences.

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The volume from which this chapter is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 133.717. Show less

This chapter looks at different systems of education and training around the world. It discusses a curious paradox. Although the world of work is deeply dependent on the skills that arise from learning, employers and other stakeholders from the world of work are often remarkably uninvolved in education in general, and even in vocational education and training systems. The chapter also looks at the origins of this unfortunate paradox, why it matters, and how it might be resolved. The challenges faced by vocational education are also a problem, in some ways an even bigger problem, for academic education. Education and training systems, unfortunately, are often happier in silos. Vocational programmes and qualifications too often ignore the study and wider skills that can prepare students for further learning. Labour market regulation has a big potential impact on the willingness of employers to engage with the education system, including the vocational training system.

Abstract from publisher's website.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 133.717. Show less

Employability is a contentious issue, and there is no single definition in the context of higher education. The definition of employability as adopted by the UK's Enhancing Student Employability Co-ordination Team (ESECT) in 2005 has been widely accepted. The impact of such Government intervention has resulted in policy-driven strategies being pursued by universities that typically advocate an integrated approach for the enhancement of graduate employability. Definitions of employability as offered by those working at policy level resonate with widely accepted models. The size of the four stakeholder sample groups was carefully considered in order to generate an appropriate level of credible research material. Respondents from the four stakeholder groups agreed that universities do have some level of responsibility to prepare students in terms of graduate employability. An individual working at policy level also highlighted that placements and work experience were beneficial to students in terms of developing their employability.

Abstract from publisher's website.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 133.717. Show less

This report, published with support from Lifeskills created with Barclays, sets out findings from a survey of 1,744 young British adults aged 19-24. The survey undertaken on behalf of Education and Employers by YouGov investigates the experiences of respondents as they engage in transitions which take them from education towards the working world. The focus of the report is on work related activities commonly undertaken by schools and colleges to help prepare them for such transitions, relating specifically to employer engagement in education. The report sets out the recollections of these young adults on actions taken by educational institutions to prepare them for the working world; their perceptions of the quality of their experiences; where they feel greater preparation would have been valued; and, using statistical regression analysis, what it was that schools and colleges did which actually helped with those transitions.

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Guest speakers are one key lever among many that schools use to inspire young people about possible futures and what it might take to reach them, as well as broaden students' horizons to see the world outside of their classroom and local community. This report draws on surveys of state schools and colleges from the networks of Education and Employers and Speakers for Schools, surveys with their students, and an interview program with independent schools to understand why teachers who invite guest speakers to give talks keep doing it, how teachers source speakers and run the talks, and how talks relate to changes in attitudes in young people. The research found: (1) the vast majority of young people are positive about the benefits from talks; (2) young people were particularly positive about the talks having helped them understand that everyone had to overcome setbacks; (3) a program of talks can also reduce the number of students feeling their background holds them back, from a significant minority to barely a handful and; (4) 'Free School Meal' (FSM) students typically benefitted more than non-FSM students, positioning talks as an effective tool particularly in schools with higher disadvantage.

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