Education Business Exchange events launched
BXL creates Education Business Exchange events
Thursday 26th November saw the launch of the first in a series of Education Business Exchange events hosted by BXL, designed to share knowledge and contacts between Educators, Businesses and Brokers.
As the ostensible Education Business Partnership Organisation (EBPO) in the area BXL, along with other key brokers such as the CBI and BiTC, felt there was a place for a regular debate to be held between partners regarding common issues.
The events are designed to be open to anyone involved in the agenda, with a focus on educating all sides of the different perspectives of Education and Business, as well as providing a forum to inform Brokers to design more effective interventions.
This event focused on initially explaining some of the key programmes run by organisations such as CBI, BiTC, BXL, andYoung Enterprise.We then went on to debate how to create a step change in the work experiences offered to your young people, hearing from all sides of the debate.
We are enormously grateful to all of the speakers who took part in the debate, representing schools such as, Washwood Heath, Cockshut Hill, Castle Vale St George's and Harborne Hill and examples of good employer practice across regular work placements such as the Birmingham Children's Hospital, and longer term alternative pathways placements such as the Solihull Ranger Service.
Emerging good practice seems to demand a new approach, away from the traditional two weeks of summer placements that can be painful to arrange, and without proper briefing and debriefing of employers and young people, can be at worst a waste of time, or at best two weeks off school for the young person.
Our learning from the debate was that:
- We should listen to what students want
- There is an opportunity to create new interventions to support diversity, for example Muslim Girls' work experience
- Time pressures on both sides (Employers and Educators) means better managed/timetabled interventions would help
- We should look at how we can we spend the current investments differently (for example, do we really need to H&S check Blue-chip organisations)?
- Project-based or group-based experiences work well for all involved (engagement easier, outcomes easier to identify)
- Brokers should look at ways of bringing work experience into schools where possible
The outcome from BXL's perspective is that we will be developing two additional types of work experience building on current best practice. First, we will create more modules to take into schools to help deliver work experience on campus. Secondly, we will be investing in building more external partnership centres such as the ones we already successfully run at Jaguar and Land Rover , which will enable focused and controlled work experience that can fit into timetabling easier.
In addition, BXL have for some time been working on a common database to enable faster and more accurate yet secure connections between employers and young people, and this will be launched early in 2010 for wider public use.
The next event is on Friday 26th February 2010, and the focus of the discussion among other things will be for Educators to demystify qualifications for employers, and to debate a solution that looks at accrediting the ‘soft skills' demanded by Employers for young people. Click here to book a place.
The press release for the last event can be found here
