The SCL Team and Speakers for Schools empower learners at Cranbury College. Across two interactive sessions in March and April this year, Josh Hill, SCL’s Director of Work Based Learning, introduced a group of young people from Cranbury College to careers in sport and beyond.
Cranbury College is a pupil referral unit and alternative education provision academy based in Reading. The sessions were part of the Workplace Encounters Project, commissioned by Berkshire Careers Hub and delivered by social mobility charity Speakers for Schools, which saw 263 young people from schools across the county take part in a series of sessions facilitated by 14 different employers. The project was designed to introduce young people to potential employers and to increase their understanding of the world of work.
Josh began session 1 on the 15th of March by setting out what they would learn, including transferrable skills that employers look for and encouraging them to reflect on what skills they already had as part of their toolkit. He then shared his own career story, along with the likes of Barack Obama, Meghan Markle and Hugh Jackman to demonstrate that not even the most successful people have a straightforward career journey. Josh provided the learners with a number of helpful resources to inform their next steps, including podcasts and articles from organisations like Indeed and the National Careers Service.
Careers are about managing life, learning and work, and knowing your skillset will help you find work that aligns, you enjoy and gives you purpose. – Josh Hill, Director of Work Based Learning, SCL.
In session 2 on the 26th of April, Josh delved into wider careers in sport, covering the off-pitch opportunities available to them within football such as club manager, academy football coach and digital content manager. For each role, the learners were encouraged to consider four things: the skills and experience needed, their prospects and the skills they already had to offer.
Josh’s flexible, ‘can do’ approach to the sessions made it both engaging and relatable to our students. I have plans to ask for Josh’s support in future projects, owing to the excellent input we received. – Will Baggley Lead for Careers, AP & Outreach from Cranbury College.
SCL is looking forward to continuing to support Cranbury College and their careers provision from Autumn 2024 onwards.
Speakers for Schools is a social mobility charity, founded in 2010 by ITV’s Political Editor Robert Peston and supported by the Law Family Charitable Foundation. Its mission is to help level the playing field for young people of all backgrounds, increasing access to the same prestigious networks available to the top fee-paying schools in the UK. It provides talks from influential figures as well as work experiences linking state school students to hundreds of the UK’s leading employers. Head to their website to find out more – www.speakersforschools.org.
If you have any questions on how you too might drive this sort of change at your school. then please contact the Berkshire team at [email protected]
