There are over seven million
schoolchildren in England, and all of them need to choose a career path to
ensure a fulfilling future. Yet the delivery of careers guidance in the country
has often been poor. Responding to this problem, Northumbria’s academics worked
with three schools in the North East to design and embed into school curricula a
new Workplace Investigation Framework that stretches beyond mere ‘site visits’
and allows children to gain deeper insight into the changing world of work. This
approach was successfully incorporated into the Gatsby Foundation’s careers
handbook that is now used by three quarters of schools in England.
Northumbria academics Dr Nick Spencer and Dr Mark Bailey argue that design stretches beyond creation of materials and
products and should be applied to create more intangible ‘products’ – interactions,
strategies and systems within organisations. After working across different
sectors, including long-term collaboration with the multinational consumer
goods company Unilever, they turned attention to education.
There are over seven million
schoolchildren in England that are eventually going to leave school and join the
national workforce. Figuring out what career to choose is often a hard task. Career
guidance in schools is regularly delivered as ‘site visits’ as an add-on to the
school curriculum and take place a couple of times a year, but unfortunately, they
do not provide sufficient insight into the world of work. In order to change
this outdated approach to career guidance, Spencer and Bailey have worked with
three schools in the North East (Berwick Academy, Churchill Community College,
and Shotton Hall Academy) for two years, creating a new framework for designing
and delivering career guidance that could be applied in schools of varying
sizes and locations and can be tailored to specific school circumstances. This
new Workplace Investigation Framework guided schools in how to structure pupils’
learning about the changing world of work (e.g., how to explore the nature of
certain professions, diversity within sectors and contexts, workforce needs),
moving away from the narrow ‘site visit’ definition. Importantly, the framework
allowed career guidance to be embedded into school curricula, making it an
integral part of education.
Following the successful design
of career guidance for schools, Northumbria’s framework was incorporated into
the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. The Gatsby Benchmarks were used to create a core
framework for the Department for Education Careers Strategy launched in
December 2017, and the Statutory Guidance published in 2018. Moreover, a guidance
handbook that incorporated Northumbria’s Workforce Investigation Framework was
distributed to every headteacher in England, and the handbook is now used by
three quarters of schools in the country, showing how design can lead
responsible social innovation.
