PBL isn’t always the easy route. It’s an off-road journey - hard at times but the experience and skills make it worthwhile.
With the growing expectation that young people should acquire essential future skills, the concept of employer engagement has evolved. It’s no longer limited to vocational and technical colleges like mine, London Design & Engineering University Technical College (LDE UTC), but is now a fundamental aspect of mainstream education. Unfortunately, employer engagement in many schools remains limited to patchwork careers advice and guidance. But what if you could embed it into every subject, key concept and year group from Year 9 to 13? Over the past decade, that’s what LDE UTC has done, rewriting what’s possible for young people in one of the UK’s most deprived boroughs. Our school is heavily oversubscribed. Last year, we had over 6,000 expressions of interest for 450 places. At KS4, 53.5% of students achieve grades 5-9 in English and Maths (8% above the national average), and 91% achieve the same in the sciences. While many of our students have been excluded from past schools, we can count our last ten years exclusions on one hand. We’ve achieved this by making education real, relevant and memorable.
Drop-down days and one-off assemblies serve a purpose, yes, but they’re just a starting point. Employer engagement only works when fully integrated into curriculum delivery – when employer partners relate the specific concepts students are learning to the real world. It’s why we created an intentional framework structured around four interconnected pillars: Inspire (inspirational masterclasses), Create (creative projects), Prepare (professional skills development) and Experience (workplace experiences).
Masterclasses are single sessions where employers connect with what students are learning. For instance, in English, students study persuasive writing through Macbeth. To make this relevant, we might bring in local estate agents to share how similar persuasive language is used to market properties – same curriculum, but suddenly it’s more memorable. Employers can also contribute to multi-session creative projects. In Digital Media, for example, students work with a visual effects company creating Star Wars-style planetary landscapes. The employer delivers briefs, mid-project critiques, and assesses the final results exactly as they would in industry. And these projects increase top grades by 39%.
Through projects, workshops and mentoring, employers also help develop professional skills. Regularly meeting students allows them to embed career pathways and drive home workplace expectations. All this culminates in rich workplace experiences for all students. We’re currently coordinating 180 T-level students on extended placements and will expand this to 250 next year. And because students develop employer relationships over several years, these aren’t cold starts. Crucially, we’ve been successful not because we’re a UTC with existing industry links, but because we’ve contextualised learning through real-world application. In theory, any school can achieve this. However, existing models of employer engagement demand individual effort without scalable delivery mechanisms. That’s a problem for busy teachers and businesses alike.
To solve this, colleagues and I have created the Industry and Educators Exchange platform (IndEX), which is designed to help schools and businesses coordinate employer engagement at scale. Using artificial intelligence, IndEX matches teachers with industry professionals based on subject, location and curriculum. It identifies which concepts employers can deliver, generates customisable presentation materials and offers automated impact reporting. Crucially, IndEX utilises the two-day volunteering allowance many companies already offer their staff by channelling employees into purposeful, curriculum-linked engagements where their expertise has real impact. Everything is coordinated remotely – sessions can be delivered face-to-face or online, depending on preference, with the platform handling logistics that currently eat up teacher time.
While IndEX is still under development, over the past five years we’ve piloted the underlying approach, supporting numerous primary and secondary schools and successfully reaching around 30,000 young people.
Once fully up and running, IndEX will target 12 regional hubs aligned with the government’s industrial strategy – regions focused on sectors like AI, advanced manufacturing, and green tech. The key for us is connecting schools with local employers so young people can develop skills to match their region’s priority industries. For those new to the idea of embedding employer engagement, I’ve written guides outlining how to lay foundations, develop a culture and strategy, and adapt and scale this model. Again, the approach isn’t just for schools with a traditional vocational focus – you don’t need to offer technical specialisms or subjects. At its core, IndEX is about making learning engaging. It supports local economies and skills development, yes, but ultimately it’s there to support young people.
There’s no need to go all in on day one. Start small – one subject, one concept, one employer – and expand at your own pace. But nobody has to go it alone. That’s why I was so glad to discover Edge’s Deeper Learning UK network. I’ve already connected with numerous like-minded educators and organisations. To me, the question is no longer whether employer engagement can be embedded into every subject; it's how quickly we can make it the norm.
Written by
Geoffrey Fowler, Principal and CEO of London Design & Engineering University Technical College.
To get involved, visit the-index.uk or contact geoffrey.fowler@ldeutc.co.uk