One core principle of our school concept is that students are ready to do productive work much earlier than is commonly expected of them. We do not subscribe to the idea that young people need to be "protected" from the world of work and stuck in educational limbo up until the age of 15 (or 25, in many cases), by which time they are supposed to have been filled up with enough theoretical information to be sufficiently "prepared".
On the contrary, we are convinced that direct experience with a variety of different types of work not only helps students find a satisfying career later on, but also increases their motivation for learning, by giving them tangible goals to work towards and sharpening their focus on what they actually need to learn. This is the central assumption underlying the design of our Orientation Phase, which includes in-house entrepreneurial projects, practical workshops led by professionals from various sectors, and mini-internships at local businesses and organizations. A recent report (PDF) from the Education Endowment Foundation seems to confirm many of these assumptions. It is an in-depth review of 96 international high-quality studies of career education interventions, aiming to find out which types of interventions have a positive impact on educational attainment, economic success and social outcomes. One central finding of the report is that "higher levels of supported, authentic exposure to the labour market, in its very different forms, can challenge young people to think afresh about their aspirations and their engagement with education and pathways through it." This sort of reflection, even at an early age, is important because "a range of high quality studies have shown that what young people think about careers (particularly whether they are uncertain or confused/misaligned) influences later academic and employment outcomes. [...] Young people are commonly understood to make use of their episodes of careers education, and especially first-hand experiences of the labour market, to gain improved insights into the operation of the labour market, its breadth and demands. In turn, it is argued, new insights enable more informed decision-making, smoothing the transition into sustained employment." The report identifies a number of "consistent features of effective careers education", including:
Another relevant finding is that students who do part-time work while still in school tend to be more successful economically as adults. With the rapid decline of part-time work by teenagers, the authors note, "the requirement grows on schools, colleges, and employers -- through the realm of careers education -- to help young people gain insights, exposure, and experiences that traditionally they would have accessed through direct, paid experience of the labour market." However, the authors also acknowledge that reliable empirical studies of such interventions are still few and far between. By building on their results and working with researchers to evaluate the impact of our own approach, we hope to contribute to the development of effective career education.
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August 2017
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