Blog: ‘Leading with Purpose’ – a pioneering ‘enhancement activity’ integrating careers education into Initial Teacher Education
Who’s Who
I used to think nurses.
Were women,
I used to think police
Were men,
I used to think poets
Were boring,
Until I became one of them.
Benjamin Zephaniah
In March 2023 I had the privilege of meeting the late, great, poet, Benjamin Zephaniah. I was struck by his compassion and wisdom. He took time to connect with me and my children, then 9 and 11 and he shared the poem above. It was a perfect choice. I have spent my professional life considering careers education coming to understand that careers education is absolutely pivotal in education and learning for all age groups.
We know we need a more relevant, responsive and resilient education system; the challenge is how to achieve this. A new Labour government have put skills and careers on the agenda and renewed hope. Placing careers more centrally in schools has so much to offer. It enables children to locate themselves in the world; it provides a ladder of social opportunity for young people. And careers education unlocks the potential of teachers by offering them a wider perspective to sustain their vocation and commitment.
While policy is a lever for change, it does not create the conditions or capacities to deliver it. Real change happens in the mindsets, aspirations, drive and commitment that underlies the everyday practice of teachers and school leaders up and down the country. If careers are to figure more centrally in school development planning and improvement, we need to create the capacities and conditions for this to happen. This includes introducing teachers to the transformative potential of careers education for themselves and students much earlier in their career.
From January to July 2024 ITE students at Univeristy of Worcester elected to follow a PGCE Enhancement Activity in Careers Education. This was the outcome of a collaborative innovation between University of Worcester, Worcester LEP / Children’s First, The Edge Foundation and the Careers and Enterprise Company all of whom have a strategic interest in high quality careers education. We left our egos at the door, galvanised around this key idea and integrated it into our own strategies. We created a micro ecosystem to support Kim Hibbert-Mayne, the Course Leader who in turn bought out the very best in the cohort.
We believe this is emergent and pioneering work so we wanted to lay down the path we have taken and the learning that is emerging so it might be of use to others. Kim Hibbert-Mayne has produced a toolkit for the Edge Practice website that will be of use to PGCE Mentors, teachers and school leaders. Kim generously shares the resource bank used and the lessons learned so that those engaged in Initial Teacher Education can use these resources to plan their own programmes. You can access this on the Edge practice site here.
There are three clear rationale for integrating careers education more widely into ITE:
1) Making the curriculum more relevant
We face an engagement challenge in our schools, evidenced by record low attendance and increasing home-schooling. Young people are struggling to find their passion within the current curriculum offer. Arts and creative subjects have been marginalised and technology struggles with under recruitment as profound as physics, computing or MFL (Henshaw 2023). A vibrant and carefully integrated careers education strategy offers a way of innovating the curriculum to restore relevance by helping young people locate themselves in an ever-changing world.
2) Promoting equity and social mobility
Careers education deserves a higher profile because it can help young people break through glass ceilings of disadvantage. We have encouraged trainees to be intentional about social capital through this programme as this is what helps us build our networks and also students to be more aware of how to build a successful career. Its not ‘what’ you know but ‘who’ you know that accounts for the success of young people (Freeland Fisher 2018) and the careers agenda is the best place to bring this alive in schools.
3) Teacher engagement and retention.
By giving trainee teachers the opportunity to connect careers with their own of purpose we are doing something more profound – empowering them to make their own contribution to systems change through the roles they are starting. This is ‘teacher leadership’ writ large. All teachers are leaders and well placed to innovate in their classrooms and beyond (Mackay et al 2022). In a world of accelerating change we all need to step up and lead within the roles we have. This project has enabled intending teachers to give themselves permission to see themselves as leaders who are able to ground their practice in their own sense of purpose. We know how important this is at a time when over 40% of the profession leave within 10 years (EPI 2023). We hope this will help this cohort find their place within the profession and that may help keep them there.
We have such a long way to go to realise the potential of careers education to bring the curriculum to life, engage teachers and students with the real world, allow young people and teachers to build their vocational networks and harness their social capital to make the most of them. A commitment to careers education as a whole school strategy, rather than just a tick box exercise is becoming the hallmark of a forward thinking, relevant and purposeful school.
The trainees who gave their all within this Programme now feel ready and prepared to contribute, from a deeper sense of purpose that will, we hope, anchor them when things get tough and shape their contribution as their careers develop. Teaching is tough and the more we can create capacities and conditions for teachers to connect with all that makes them whole, the easier their load will be. And, as one participant concluded, career development is personal development and vice versa: ‘This doesn’t seem like the end of the Programme; it feels like the beginning of a much deeper journey of self-discovery.’ And just possibly of system change...
References
Henshaw, P. (2023). Where are all the teachers? Nine out of 17 subjects on track to significantly under-recruit. [online] SecEd. Available at: https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/news/where-are-all-the-teachers-nine-out-of-17-subjects-on-track-to-significantly-under-recruit/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2024].
Julia Freeland Fisher, Fisher, D. and Christensen, C.M. (2018). Who you know : unlocking innovations that expand students’ networks. San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.