Primary World of Work Activities

Not many primary schools delivered careers or world of work sessions regularly and some schools found it hard to recruit employer volunteers to participate in sessions. There is a wealth of evidence that the earlier children and young people are exposed to different types of careers, the more likely they are to have broader aspirations for their future selves and are less likely to avoid certain career routes based on stereotypes. In areas where children have fewer successful role models, their ambitions are likely to be narrower and based on who they know.

We created an approved list of World of Work (WOW) providers allowing primary schools to choose Opportunity Area (OA) funded sessions each term. This was offered to all primary schools with assemblies, curriculum based full and half day sessions and employer enterprise workshops.  Over 1,900 primary school students participated in sessions and all had at least one encounter with an employer volunteer. 

The Norwich Opportunity Area (NOA) commissioned a range of local and national providers of WOW programmes, offers were then shared with schools to sign up to their chosen provider and chosen activity. Providers sourced and supported employer volunteers to participate in sessions in local schools. 

Sessions were delivered in schools either off timetable with whole year groups, or with individual classes or student groups. Most sessions included a pupil survey afterwards to capture feedback from participants, as well as routes to capture feedback from teachers involved. 

Examples of external local providers who created WOW events are Camouflaged Learning and Curious Spark. Camouflaged Learning were commissioned to work with primary schools to audit existing approaches to parental engagement, test out new sessions for parents and children to participate in together to explore careers, aspirations and ideas about the future and then run CPD sessions for school staff to plan how to incorporate new or different approaches within their school in future.  

Curious Spark created ‘WOW Catton Grove!’ a community initiative funded by the NOA and the Catton Grove Big Lottery Fund. The aim of the project was to provide young people, parents and their extended community with an extensive awareness, knowledge and ownership of the ‘world of work’ within their neighbourhood and beyond. It aimed to build confidence between adults and children to enable regular conversations about the world of work and feel well equipped to support each other to think about the future. The project worked with families of Catton Grove Primary School who became the WOW Catton Grove Experts exploring their community’s past and present and finding ‘world of work’ solutions for their futures. 

Please see the case studies on these projects for more details: Parent Engagement with Careers and Aspirations World of Work – Catton Grove

Sessions to introduce children to careers and aspirations at primary age are well received by pupils and teachers. Through these activities, pupil’s awareness of different sorts of jobs increases, stereotypes are reduced and pupil’s confidence and teamwork skills improve, as well as their ability to link skills for the future with learning at school. Feedback from teachers and pupils was extremely positive. For the majority of schools this type of activity was new and not already delivered through the school. 

Some schools struggled to plan and embed activities into the school curriculum throughout the year and, in some cases, volunteers dropped out of sessions at the last moment. We agreed to plan a “Futures Week” into the school year when all primary schools could access activities during the summer term and collectively recruit a large number of employer volunteers via an annual campaign. Unfortunately, this was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

All the activities included engaging with an employer – 1,900 encounters for pupils. Based on surveys after the sessions, pupil’s awareness of different sorts of jobs increased (99% of pupils learnt about a new job they didn’t know about), stereotypes were reduced and pupil’s confidence and teamwork skills had improved. 88% of pupils said they had learnt how their skills could be used at work and 97% said they learnt how what they learn in school links to future jobs (see the case studies you can access on this page for more details on how the success of individual careers activities was measured).