Now more than ever, young people are bound to making important decisions about their futures early on in life. For instance, choosing what subjects they want to study, which pathways are an appropriate option e.g. apprenticeship or T levels; what job they want to do and which qualifications they need. All are too overwhelming to decide without sufficient experience and access to right information and guidance.
Yet access to this information is often dependent on under-resourced schools and colleges or family privilege. This has social justice implications as young people with access to labour market information and parental networks are better placed to make more informed choices about their future and find high-quality work experience that ultimately helps them to secure a well-paid job.
We recently published two research reports as a part of our Work Experience For All campaign, which looked at the impact of work experience on young people, and the evidence shows over and over again that young people can benefit greatly from participation in work experience. Work experience delivers better employment outcomes and provides opportunities for young people to develop essential skills.
But how can we move past apparently entrenched obstacles to access that leave the poorest out of a fundamental part of their educational journey?
An affordable price tag
Yesterday in Westminster, we launched a report researched by independent think-tank, Social Market Foundation and commissioned by Speakers for Schools. The report offers a new model for universal work experience, and shows that it is achievable and affordable.
Indeed, developing and delivering a universal work experience offer would cost a modest £75 million a year to deliver. This covers the economic cost of building a universal programme from scratch to provide two placements per individual student, and includes the cost of coordinating at a national and regional level.
The report breaks down the cost of work experience and argues for a benchmark of £60 per placement. Considering the number of students in a typical year group, this takes the cost to £72million. This includes a budget for regional delivery partners to connect schools and regional employers, and for schools to pay for staff and admin costs for organising placements. In addition, the report calls for a centrally managed online platform that enlists nationally available placement opportunities and estimates the cost of running it to be about £3 million annually.
A sage investment
Crucially, we ought to consider the return on investment when presenting these costs, especially under the current economic climate and with schools under so much pressure to balance books and find extra resources. Analysis of longer and more intense work experience programmes for young unemployed people has found they bring a net benefit of £150 per placement to the Treasury, which offers some encouragement for universal work placements.
To scale the offer properly, we want to start small and take time to build a steady supply of placements with businesses of all shapes and sizes. The report proposes that disadvantaged areas are prioritised, helping the young people who need it most.
A decade ago, work experience for school-age students was deemed redundant. But we live in a different world now, transformed by digitisation, automation and political change. Our future prosperity depends on every young person having access high-quality opportunities to discover a changed workplace, and the evidence shows what powerful and life-changing impact such opportunites can have on them.
The findings in this report will inform our future conversations with government, educators and employers, as we hope to turn these recommendations into a realistic working model that all political parties can endorse.
Ultimately, at a time when there has never been such universal agreement on the need to improve skills in England, work experience looks like an inexpensive commitment with a return everyone will benefit from.
‘Learning from experience: How to make high quality work experience for all a reality’ can be accessed here.
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