Over the past 15 years any secondary school looking to raise the aspirations and ambitions of its students has probably undertaken informative trips to Oxbridge or Russell Group universities. 

This reflects a wider shift within society more generally to embrace the ambition of half of school leavers attending university as a means of social mobility. After all, regardless of the cost pressures, a degree in many subjects leaves graduates with enhanced employability - and earning - prospects. 

This national drive has been admirable but, by focusing on post-school education, we have created a Cinderella service for work experience - in essence, unloved and overlooked.

In fact, new research from Speakers for Schools reveals that two-thirds of 18- to 30-year-olds cannot recall having had work experience. Yet it also found that each work placement a child undertakes can raise their salary by over £1,000 per year when in full-time employment. 

The research forms part of the charity’s new campaign to make work experience a universal right for all state-educated students. It is a campaign I wholeheartedly endorse, not least because it is something that we at Harris Federation have promoted for many years.

Across our 52 academies we place a strong emphasis on career advice - led by our dedicated team of careers advisers.

They run a packed calendar of talks and events - often involving input from professionals from a diverse range of sectors to help get students thinking about career options and goals - and arrange those crucial, and often illuminating, hands-on work experiences placements. 

To do this we have built up relationships with firms such as Capgemini, Snapchat and Macquarie Group, typically combining work placements with other initiatives such as talks by the employer, who describes what they do and the kinds of careers they offer, and ongoing mentoring for our students from employees of the company.

For this sort of thing to be successful across our sector, in line with what Speakers for Schools is calling for, more needs to be done. There are three prerequisites for this to work that I think all schools can achieve.

How to improve work experience opportunities in schools

1. Lead from the top (by picking up the phone)

Work experience needs to be seen as a priority and so it must be led from the top of the school.

As an executive principal across two secondary academies, I have made it my purpose to introduce and run work experience; making the connections with businesses, matching our students with the professions that interest them and helping them to keep these relationships alive once the work experience has taken place.

Putting this into practice can be as basic as picking up the phone and making the call to someone senior in the company or organisation we are targeting.

We need to remember that while we in the education sector are all familiar with roles in schools, such as careers coordinator, enrichment leader or pastoral SLT, the one term every business executive knows and remembers is ‘“headteacher” - so it makes a difference when we get in touch.

As workplace destinations are not measured in any official data, it is too easy for work experience to fall off the priority list compared with getting students over the qualifications hurdles needed for their next step.

But if we don’t prioritise careers advice, who will? Being halfway through a degree in history is too late to answer your calling as a pharmacist.

2. Remove archaic social barriers

In many schools and communities work experience is something that parental networks take a lead in orchestrating.

That’s great when you are in a middle-class community where managerial grades and workplace decision-makers comprise your parental population. But it’s a real problem in areas of high unemployment, transient workforces or low-level parental qualifications.

The children in our schools don’t tend to have parents with contact books, alumni reunions or influential social networks willing to give a friend’s offspring a step up.

So we need to put these networks in place ourselves. This needn’t be daunting or even particularly time-consuming, with many industries keen to engage with a wider, more diverse range of young people in order to attract the brightest and the best into careers with them in the future.

While few of our parents are able to offer opportunities for work experience, their appetite for their children to gain exposure to the workplace is unlimited. In my entire career, I am yet to find a parent who didn’t want their child to have a good job, even if they were unable to facilitate it or even understand what that job might be.

Parental backing is very important but one of the key attributes of work experience is that it is sometimes the first opportunity a young person has to see themselves as an adult in the making, away from their parents and away from their school.  

The impact this can have on their own aspirations and drive can be highly significant in what they bring back to school. Good, well-run work experience encourages students to see the potential not only of their future lives but also their future selves.

In the teenage years, when some feel at their most disillusioned, the potential doors that work experience opens can be a beacon of aspiration for their future.

3. Embrace technology’s benefits

Technology can play a key role in opening up work experience opportunities, which have typically been restricted to the employers based in your immediate locality for logistical reasons. This might be limiting for many students who aim to work in a sector that doesn’t have a nearby presence.

To overcome this, we started rolling out virtual work experience during the pandemic when physical workplaces were out of reach, but we continue to see its value - not least because employers have been able to open up virtual placements to many more students than possible with in-person placements.

In partnership with organisations like Speakers for Schools, our students use tools like Google Classroom to participate in the placements, either from school or at home during the holidays.

The employer designs different sessions for our students, from talks with people at different seniority levels and departments of the workplace, to group or individual tasks that the students then present back to the employer. 

Levelling up work experience opportunities, so they are available to all children regardless of which school they go to, where they live or who their parents are is, undoubtedly, a challenge. But it is essential if we are going to properly address the social mobility issues this country faces.

In the long term it is employers who benefit from work experience rather than schools, but we, as educators, have the moral responsibility to make it part of our remit.

Nick Soar is executive principal of Harris Academy Tottenham and Harris Academy St John’s Wood, working with Speakers for Schools on its campaign #WorkExperienceForAll