UNISON has welcomed this week’s publication of Not Just Making Tea…, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills’ guide to “reinventing work experience”.
“This guide rightly recognises the value of quality work experience and offers some excellent examples of innovative practice,” says national secretary of education and children’s services Jon Richards.
“Work experience changes lives. Young people who get early experience of the world of work are significantly less likely to end up unemployed” and more likely to “get better jobs and earn more money.
“Employers who offer work experience also enjoy major benefits,” adds Mr Richards.
“Twenty nine percent of employers say that experience is critical when recruiting young people and a further 45% say it is significant. Despite this, only 27% of employers offered work experience in the past year.”
Mr Richards said that too many employers believed that work experience was simply a two-week placement in the summer, but he went on to say that it was “not just making tea.
“It is about inspiring young people, opening their eyes to the range and variety of the career opportunities open to them and showing them the importance of the choices they make.”
Mr Richards noted that UNISON was “disappointed” that the guide does not reference the vital navigational role that careers guidance professionals provide in helping young people find the appropriate experience and the quality brokerage role they play with employers.
He explained that the union believes that this explains the low take up as well as collapse of the education business partnerships that has been presided over by the government.
This initiative was published a few days after a CBI briefing on the Department for Communities and Local Government project Unlocking Talent and Potential – a programme that aims to build partnerships between schools and businesses.
Mr Richards explained that that programme aims to build capacity within schools and integrate areas that have often become “islands of activity within schools” – careers education, information and guidance; work experience; employer engagement, work-related learning and enterprise education.
Describing the programme as “valuable and innovative” he observed that no added resources from central government were being made available for it.
