Do You Need Resources For Careers Learning?

This is the first of an informal series of posts following on from my previous 2 posts on Meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks One Departments At a Time. Which covered how to get subjects on side and help them to see how they can support the meeting of the Gatsby Benchmarks, If you’ve not read these posts you can find post 1 here and post 2 here

One of the key things I recommended in those posts was to look at the key barriers facing each department and provide resources to help overcome the barriers.

Some of the most effective careers conversations happen in small moments. A quick discussion during tutor time. A starter activity before a lesson begins. A simple question that gets students thinking differently about their future.

The Reasoning Behind These Resources

For many young people, careers learning can feel distant or disconnected from everyday school life. Short, regular activities help change that. They normalise conversations about jobs, skills, pathways and aspirations in a way that feels manageable for both staff and students.

A five or ten minute activity can:

• introduce students to careers they have never heard of

• challenge stereotypes and misconceptions

• help students recognise their own strengths and skills

• connect curriculum subjects to future opportunities

• build confidence in talking about the future

• support Gatsby Benchmark delivery in a realistic and sustainable way

Importantly, these activities also help careers become everybody’s business. Tutors and classroom teachers do not need to become careers experts overnight. Simple, structured activities can open meaningful conversations without creating additional workload.

In schools where tutor time is already busy, careers activities need to be practical. They need to work with little preparation, fit into short time slots and engage students quickly. That is exactly the purpose of this new series of posts.

Over the coming weeks, I will be sharing ready-to-use tutor time and classroom activities designed to:

• take no more than 15 minutes

• require minimal preparation

• support Gatsby Benchmarks

• work across different year groups

• encourage participation and discussion

The first activity in the series is “What’s the Job?” — a simple clue-based challenge that helps students explore careers, recognise skills and connect subjects to the working world. You can change the learning objectives to fit Gatsby Benchmarks by changing the questions. For example, if LMI is a focus, ask questions about working patterns or salary. For Gatsby Benchmark 4, look for links to subjects.

All the resources I’ll be suggesting and providing for paid subscribers will be customisable and take just a few minutes to adapt to the schools’ needs.

Step 1 give 3 clues about a job. For example:-

• Works with animals

• Can take up to 18 months to train

• Earns between £15k and £23k per year

The answer to that one is Dog Groomer

The information can simply be found in the National Careers Service Job Profiles

Step 2 Ask them some questions about the role, such as what skills would it use or what subjects would be useful if you wanted to do this job?

Step 3 Ask them to set their own clues and answers.

Sometimes careers education is not about doing something huge. It is about creating regular moments that help young people think a little more widely about their futures. Over time, those moments add up.

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