#207 World Of Work – Catton Grove Primary

Ninety people took part in the ‘WOW Catton Grove Treasure Hunt’ after school. ‘Around Our Block’ had 20 participants after school. ‘Horrible Histories or Pleasant Past’ ran in class with parent/carers invited to join in. Three year 3 classes of 90 children were joined by 47 parents. This session stimulated lots of interesting discussion and creativity with parents, children and teachers and 42 evaluations were completed.

Evaluation showed that:

• Nearly all parents enjoyed learning alongside their child.
• Nearly all parents were now confident to have positive conversations with their child about their skills, interests and careers.
• Most parents felt that they now knew where to get information about careers for their child.
• Nearly all children understood the different types of skills they would need to get jobs in the future.
• Most children learnt about new types of jobs.
• Most children were confident about getting future employment.

I approached the project by considering how jobs had been introduced in the Catton Grove community throughout it’s history, how work had changed and to question what future work life would look like in the local area and further afield. I wanted to find out if primary aged families were already talking about what work their young people would want to do and how to guide them. So using the history, geography and employment data I looked to develop fun sessions with interesting resources, but without making them overtly about careers, training and prospects. I was very aware that encouraging engagement with parents would be tricky, so I developed fun parent/child activities that were not outwardly about ‘learning’ something but had plenty of new knowledge, aspirational, communication and working in a team skills at the heart of them.

After school activity was a challenge due to having to find space to meet and where parents would find it easy to turn up and not have to travel to a different venue. Catton Grove Primary School was hugely supportive, but with the after school timetable already busy, fitting the sessions in was difficult. Running the after school sessions after the clocks went back was also something we had not appreciated would deter families from attending. Having time to set up and close down the session with all the tables and chairs and projector was utterly exhausting on my own so brought in extra help!

The Norwich Opportunity Area and Catton Grove Big Lottery Fund assisted us financially with the project so we could produce quality flyers and other printed items to engage people. They also paid for food to be delivered at the after school session. I also had to pay for extra support to help me with the tables and chairs set up. Norwich City Council generously printed out Survey Maps of Catton Grove at no cost to the project. These maps proved a total hit with both children and adults!