Trade union Aegis represents workers in the finance sectors – and has been working with employers and schools to help students understand the world of work. This is so that they are in a good position to make informed choices about options.

Caroline Plum is Learn with Aegis-Project Worker. Caroline met with Jo Sykes, Assistant Head Teacher at Parkside School in Bradford at the Bradford / Keighley Apprenticeship Hub meetings. Caroline attends the quarterly meetings which bring together Bradford Council, schools and Colleges to talk about working with business’s and helping students progress into work. 

Caroline takes up the story:

Jo spoke to me about assisting with an event that she was organising for Year 9’s to help them decide on their options for GCSE’s. This was prompted by feedback she had received from other schools where I had run similar sessions.”

The day was to provide the students with activities to help them decide on their options and to get them thinking about the world of work and where the subjects they choose can take them.

Following a couple of sessions with Jo it was agreed that Learn with Aegis, in association with Skipton Building Society, would run two sessions. Aegis was able to partner up with the Skipton to support the school as the union has a recognition agreement with the building society which has resulted in lots of union led learning opportunities for members over the years.

The sessions took place at the school on the 30th January 2018.

Caroline said:

One session was on Employability skills which I ran and started with the students watching a video showing people working and using different skills.  A discussion then followed with the class, the discussion was around what employability skills were and making a list of these for future reference such as Communication, Team work, IT and more.”

Caroline split the class into groups which discussed different skills, and what they actually meant – this was then fed back to the whole class and followed by a group discussion.

The class was then split into groups and each group were given a ‘skill’ to talk about they were also given flipchart paper to write down what each skill actually meant.

The second session which was run by two staff from Skipton Building Society, which Caroline set up, and encouraged students to think about the subjects they can pick and how these link to the careers that they would like to progress into.

Learn with Aegis supported the students by devising a form the students to use in conjunction with the Careers – Yorkshire and Humber website.  This has a useful section which gives information on the careers which a subject can lead to, along with other skills required for a job in that sector.

Caroline said: 

This session was to get students thinking about the subjects they would need to assist them into the careers that they wanted to pursue.”

The sessions proved very popular with both the students and the school.

One student said:

I had never even heard of employability skills before this session.  I now have a better idea of what I am good and what I need to work on.”

Jo’s Sykes, felt that the sessions were really useful and said:

It was wonderful to have sessions delivered by other providers, who talk with such passion and enthusiasm…students tend to get fed up of teachers!”