Employers

Why should employers get involved?

Many employers are already involved with their local schools to continue to support the development of their future local workforce and helping young people to consider routes into occupations that they might not otherwise have thought of. Engagement with schools is a “win-win” situation with many benefits for all parties. Links with schools bring young and fresh minds into your organisation helping you to look from a different perspective at how your organisation operates. It is also your opportunity to help build and mould the future workforce and an enjoyable and meaningful way for employers and individuals to give something back to the local society that they are working in. You can share your knowledge and experience and make young people’s learning of your sector as relevant and stimulating as only you know it can be.

Offering support to local schools can also be a way of meeting your organisation’s corporate and social responsibilities, whilst at the same time attracting a diverse workforce. It will also raise your organisation’s profile locally with young people, parents and teachers as consumers, potential employees, and members of the same local community.

How?

Involvement with schools can take many forms from a very limited small scale commitment to much more in-depth involvement with the school at a number of levels. The following are just a small number of the different ways that you can become involved in the North East’s schools:

  • Host school visits to your company.
  • “World of Work” events.
  • Stands at school job or enterprise fairs.
  • Extended work placements.
  • Work placements for vocational qualifications.
  • Host interview skills sessions.
  • Presentations regarding commercial awareness eg how your business started and grew, problems encountered and solved or those facing your business now.
  • Subject related input to curriculum development with offer of E-mentoring or the provision of “problems” to be solved by students.
  • Develop resources.
  • Personal career path talks.
  • Take part in Enterprise activities ie provide a business problem.
  • Teacher Placement to support school CPD.
  • Mentoring for NVQ/Voc GCSE groups (related to your industry).
  • Act as school governors.
  • Share training facilities.

Company Scholarship

Companies offer paid employment in holiday time and work experience subject to meeting academic targets, attendance, punctuality and behaviour.

Companies and school:

  • Interview parent and student.
  • Take into account school aptitude and character reports.
  • Target number of students.
  • Involvement in student target setting.
  • Work with chosen candidates to formulate plan to develop certain Key Skills.

For further information about working with local schools please contact Chris Zarraga on 0191 2805037 or info@schoolsnortheast.com, or alternatively, complete the School-Business Partnership Proforma.