From the days of trying to find, sometimes at the last minute, a suitable work placement for a week for students; which may still resonate with some of us; to organic and purposeful employer / potential employee engagement all year round, we have come a long way.

In the world beyond the school walls the annual work placements can be part of a year round and mutually beneficial relationship with individuals, businesses, organisations and, when it works best, parents and alumni.

It becomes more than a ‘careers’ box to be ticked and can empower and enrich the confidence of students who then use these experiences to build relationships and make informed choices about their future education or career path.

What follows is a series of short videos capturing the stories and experiences of those who help to deliver employer engagement for the XP Schools Trust and our partners in the community who enable that.

Kathryn Burns, Careers Lead XP Schools Trust

Kathryn is involved with many aspects of our engagement with employers, experts and organisations. Her key role was to establish a career programme that complemented and utilised our curriculum of learning through expeditions.

An important part of this is the early engagement from Year 7 of students and the continuation of this to Year 11.

Key points include: 

  • Making connections with our communities is a natural part of the school work and ethos. This is such an important factor in finding placements and matching them to individual students. 
  • Refining and nurturing those connections with organisations and experts so that there is a more focussed plan for careers with the curriculum – a natural extension of inviting experts into school, as with skills as diverse as medicine to train maintenance.
  • Our students use their voice and softs skills learnt in school; such as confidence, collaboration, communication, leadership and teamwork, so that they are proactive in a work experience situation. Resilience and tenacity when learning new things and meeting new people is something that through field work, presentations and celebrations of Learning, passage presentations and student-led conferences, our students are familiar and comfortable with. 
  • These are often the qualities that employers are looking for.
  • Early engagement with potential employers can also bring enrichment in terms of the breadth of careers students have knowledge and understanding of.

Engagement Examples:

A visit from our Doncaster Rovers football team and their support colleagues, enabled our students to appreciate that careers in sport are not just confined to being a player – although those inspired to be a professional footballer learnt helpful and practical advice first hand about how they might achieve this.

Expeditions that focussed on the story of medicine – one researched and curated with online interviews during Covid – brought our students into contact and conversation with people in the NHS from surgeons to mental health practitioners, physiotherapists to GPs.

All of the above engagement has led to positive outcomes such as the offer of part-time jobs to older students; as well as an offer to come back for an apprenticeship in the future.

All of the above also address all the Gatsby benchmarks: 

  1. The consistency and collaboration of the careers delivery model ensures that the programme is not only delivered well, it is flexible enough to be able to absorb and present new initiatives seamlessly.
  2. Our connections and partnerships with business organisations ensure that as a ‘school without walls’ our understanding and knowledge of careers and the movements in the labour market are current. 
  3. The XP Trust is also a member of the Doncaster Chamber of Commerce, which gives us access to commentary, research and events which inform and engage us in the world of business, employment and apprenticeship.
  4. We have a close and well established relationship within Sheffield Hallam University

Ian Leech, Marketing Manager, Frenchgate Centre:

Our relationship with the team that manages the Frenchgate Centre has been wholly positive for some years now, with a diverse amount of expedition work being displayed in the centre as well as requests from the Centre for our students to contribute to wider projects.

For example: Pledges written by students across all Trust schools for an eco awareness art installation sponsored by the Centre and tree planting in an eco garden, again sponsored by the Centre. The latter was part of an expedition at our Plover School where experts – gardening and eco planting – supported the work. Doncaster City Council Street Scene Urban Planning were part of the advisory group.

Both examples of working with professionals and opening up opportunities for future engagement.

Key Points:

  1. Establishing and nurturing community and business relationships that bring mutual benefits to your schools and partners. 
  2. Delivering work and joint projects that underline your team’s professionalism and your students’ engagement with potential employers and diverse service providers.

Bill McHugh, Culture Transformation Lead, Doncaster City Council: 

Bill is one of our key and respected partners at Doncaster City Council. It is a highly valued relationship based on a mutual respect and understanding of each others’ roles and brief. 

Doncaster City Council has around 5,000 employees (Figures as of August 2024) with directorates that cover everything from public Health to Communications, culture & Heritage to waste management and sustainability. 

Their public buildings from The Danum Gallery, Library and Museum (DGLaM) to the Mansion House and Civic Centre, have housed work created by our students, which in turn has led to commissions and collaborative work with our students. 

A prime example of this is the major exhibition ‘Sir Nigel Gresley; Genius of Steam and Speed’ which ran from April to September 2024 at DGLaM. We created the catalogue for the exhibition and our students were invited to the launch and other associated events – including the official welcome for the Flying Scotsman locomotive’s return to Doncaster.

All of this engagement – as well as linking in with our curriculum expeditions across all our Trust schools on the subject of transport and Doncaster’s rail heritage – has given students the opportunity to experience unique events and work on delivering real world work commissions.

You can read an article from the Doncaster Free Press about the engagement here

Key Points:

  1. Consistency in collaboration with external partners, evidencing a professional standard of communication and meeting agreed deadlines. 
  2. Showing confidence in communication when working with external partners, using your voice and staying curious; asking the questions that illustrate understanding and congruence with the work allocated. 
  3. All of the above are valued by employers and are part of ensuring purposeful engagement and long term relationships.

Mel Hewitt, Partnership Development and Media Lead, XP Trust:

Mel is the principal contact across the Trust for developing and nurturing relationships with the local and global community, businesses, charities, other organisations and the public sector. 

Her role also includes proactively seeking out possible collaborative work with partners and individuals; which again keeps schools across the XP Trust up to date with current employment trends and opportunities. 

These partners for us are national as well as local and regional. Partners in education as well as business; which allows us to collaborate with organisations as varied as English Heritage to Diabetes UK.

Each engagement through our expeditions, field work and activism brings new opportunities for our students to experience career pathways, one to one advice from experts, unique events and through this gain confidence and a voice – which again gives them a key advantage when finding their way through the maze of job and career choices.

 Key points:

  1. Establish regular and mutually supportive and focussed meetings with partners to look ahead at possible collaborations, work placement opportunities and all year round connectivity. This can range from, for example, students having the opportunity to exhibit their work professionally in a local art gallery working with established artists to researching, writing and publishing a book on vikings, which they then personally sell at the annual Yorvik Festival in York.

And finally … other important pieces of the employer engagement jigsaw:

  1. We are members as a Trust of the Doncaster Chamber of Commerce
  2. We are members of the Doncaster Rotary Club
  3. We offer Both Bronze and Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award from Year Seven.
  4. Every student in Year seven goes on Outward Bound for several days from their first day with us.
  5. XPD and XPG are ‘schools without walls” – as well as field work, students have many opportunities to work and interact with people in the real world, as part of expeditions and Crew activities.
  6. Every student has the opportunity to be an Ambassador, conducting Ambassador tours for all visitors – including delegates for CPD from around the world. 

Another exciting opportunity we are about to explore is the collaborative development of bespoke careers projects with a national organisation. A dialogue between schools, students and employers can be incredibly useful in terms of helping to shape the content and accessibility of work experience and beyond that apprenticeships and academic pathways.