A Chance to Showcase Your School’s Activities Engaging with Local Employers

A new website has just launched which, over time, should prove a useful support for getting schools better connected to businesses.

The Education and Employers’ taskforce is the new organisation - the website is here.

There is plenty of motherhood and apple pie on the site (as you might expect from a “Taskforce” containing at least 10 different organisations at my first count); there is also a liberal smattering of “engagement jargon”. You’ll probably want to ignore the five-stage process to do this, or the four-part process for doing that.

What ever happened to just picking up the phone to a local business, or inviting the MD or HR Manager round for an informal chat & coffee to see if school and business could work together? [or even better, getting a group of students to take responsibility for doing that]. In my experience, what teachers really want is detailed and realistic “how-tos”, not so much of the “why-we-should”.

My guess is that teachers will find the web site really useful if it builds a wide and practical range of “success stories”. Importantly, there is an open invitation on the site to make your contribution to this important area.

So go on - don’t be shy! If you’ve had a success (or some great learning from a “non-success”) with employer activities, then contact the website and let them know.

Don’t be put off by the civil-service style “Success Story Template” you are asked to complete - tell your story the way you want it telling (i.e. the way fellow colleagues would want to read about what you have been getting up to). Something that has really worked well at your place is likely to insprire someone to try the same thing elsewhere.