Welcome to the biggest careers event ever in Gloucestershire
Nearly 2,000 students and more than 50 businesses and organisations will meet this month for the biggest careers event ever in Gloucestershire as the county takes aim at the skills gap.
Dear readers,
We have something of a theme going on with our two main stories today, ahead of tomorrow’s full members edition - and that theme is tackling the skills gap.
Mainly we go big on a careers fair due to take place in Gloucestershire this month that will be the biggest of its kind ever staged here.
This is a coming together of almost every sector in the county - and that’s quite a few - a mash-up of EmPowerCyber and the all-new Educational Outreach Live.
The annual cyber-focused event is staged by Cheltenham-headquartered business group CyNam, and the umbrella Educational Outreach Live event has been organised by county business group Circle2Success. Two thousands students are expected at attend and scores of organisations.
This is more than just about putting businesses in touch with potential staff and helping address the skills gap, it’s also a recognition that meeting face-to-face is important and that we need to do more of it to repair changes that seem to have emerged as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before all that we shine the spotlight on an outstanding model for any school looking to deliver meaningful careers advise for its students. All Saints’ Academy in Cheltenham is the place we went to learn more after hearing about one of the unsung legacies of the GFirst LEP era.
Teacher Catherine Cain was good enough to tell us how her work with then GFirst LEP enterprise advisor, Angie Petkovic, of APT Marketing and also Beechurst Services Apartments, who helped All Saints’ create something truly life-changing for its cohort - supported by some incredible businesses and organisations.
Oh, and before all that we also throw in an update on our story from last week on Stroud’s The Long Table restaurant, how it was rescued from eviction and expanded into Cirencester, and how actor Daniel Craig had a part in that!
Remember, Raikes is a reader-supported publication - it is able to deliver journalism and a credible, respected editorially-led platform for Gloucestershire because of those paid-for subscribers and our generous Founding Partners and Founding Members. If you are not one of our growing tribe of paid-up members already, please do consider joining them.
Enjoy.
Andrew Merrell (editor).
NB: Raikes publishes probably the best-read business-related email ‘newsletter’, pound for pound, in Gloucestershire.
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An interesting update from Stroud… staring Daniel Craig!
It has emerged that vital funds to save the legendary Stroud-based pay-what-you-can restaurant, The Long Table, from eviction came from an unlikely source - actor Daniel Craig. Craig is, of course, famous for his role in the James Bond films. On Friday last week we ran an article based on a big interview with Will North from the community-focused restaurant and group of businesses headquartered at Stroud’s Brimscombe Mill. We wanted to mark its expansion into Cirencester. Quite a turnaround after the year it’s had. Eviction threatened its very future, but a mystery benefactor stepped in at the last minute to do a deal with the landlord. Craig was not that person, but his contribution is said to have been in the region of £50,000. Tom Herbert, director and co-founder of The Long Table called Craig’s contribution ‘incredible’. You can read our story on The Long Table here.
Legal advice anyone?
Willans LLP, one of Raikes’ Founding Partners has just published its Your Life and the Law newsletter for its private clients. The contents include the following…
· Autumn budget 2024: how will it affect inheritance tax?
· Farming post-budget: changes to agricultural property relief
· Do I need a financial order on divorce?
· Proactive landlords serving documents early get caught out!
· Testamentary capacity: what lessons can be learned?
· Charitable legacies: the benefits of leaving a gift in your will
· What does the new Renters’ Rights Bill mean for landlords?
You can read that very newsletter by clicking here.
The blueprint for good careers advice
Delivering good careers advice for students and engaging with exciting companies to inspire the next generation is a Holy Grail for schools everywhere, yet the model for how to do it is right here in Gloucestershire.
With the main story below being all about careers generally we thought we’d stay with that theme and do what Raikes does - shine the spotlight on some of the good work being done in the county that would otherwise not be seen.
It’s been a year since Gloucestershire’s local enterprise partnership was folded into the county council and people stopped looking to GFirst LEP for exciting business news.
That news usually came in the form of capital and infrastructure projects, funded by the incredible £113 million it won from central Government for its business plans.
But, perhaps one of its greatest legacies has actually never even been discussed – the impact its army of business people helped others have on the future of those leaving education for college, university, apprenticeships or work.
It was a chance conversation with Angie Petkovic, of APT Marketing and one of the inner circle of GFirst LEP, about good careers advice for school students that made us take a look at a model right here in Gloucestershire and we thought it was worth sharing.
Petkovic pointed us towards All Saints’ Academy, Cheltenham. It appears to have developed a careers service for its students that could well be a model for all others to follow or learn from. A model where firms like IBM and others are onboard enjoying a fruitful relationship.
Catherine Cain, one of the school’s careers leaders and its former head of sixth form, said: “I came back from maternity leave in 2019 as head of sixth form. As part of that role we decided we needed a someone who could also be head of careers.
“In terms of Ofsted report we were not where we wanted to be with regard to careers advice and we thought the head of sixth form could do that.
“GFirst asked if we wanted to meet with an enterprise advisor and that is when I met Angie. She was very clear about how she worked and I knew we would work well together.”
The focus quickly became about satisfying what are called Gatsby Benchmark questions, the benchmarks for good careers guidance in schools as laid out by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation in 2014 and taken on by Ofsted.
They range from ‘How do you provide students with reliable career information?’ to ‘How do you help students learn about different career paths?’ and ‘How do you encourage students to consider factors like salary expectations and job demands?’.
“Within six months we pretty much had everything rolling. It was during Covid, but we still managed to run a virtual careers event,” said Cain, who added none of it would have been possible without the full support of the school’s headteacher.
The more she asked from the business community, she said, the more the school received in return, and some pretty big names got involved too. Organising their visits to school and trips out to those companies was down to her, but again, the head teacher gave full support.
“We began working with Deloitte. It worked with us as part of its Five Million Futures programme,” said Cain, name-dropping one of the nation’s most respected and sought-after business names.
That programme is Deloitte’s social impact initiative to reach 100 million people by 2030 to overcome barriers to education, skills and employment.
Other companies have also become involved with All Saints’, including GE Aviation, Hydro, Spirax Sarco – some of the biggest names not just in Gloucestershire, but globally. And then there are relationships with the Navy and RAF too and many smaller companies whose input is invaluable.
“We adopted the attitude that if we can make it work and can find a slot, we will say ‘yes’ and introduce them to the students.
“It is really important. I think because I am a member of the school’s senior leadership team that has helped us get decisions made really quickly. Support from leadership is massive,” she said, by way of guidance to any other school considering the model.
For Cain the contact with all those organisations is about changing aspirations, about introducing students to careers they didn’t know about or didn’t think someone like them could ever do.
If your family, friends and extended family have nothing to do with certain professions, trades, career paths they can seem a world away – if they are on their radars at all, she said.
“Our students are pretty good at dealing with whether or not they want to go to university. 50 to 70 per cent of our year 13 want to go to university. So that’s quite a chunk that don’t.
“And students are very clued up on apprenticeships now. The stumbling block is the applications. It can be onerous. I get why that is, but it can put people off.
“Quite often the college will advertise it has apprentices and it is a good route to go down, but the student still has to find a company that wants an apprentice in the first place. That is quite hard.”
But those good relationships with business also help deliver some of the detail and develop the soft skills that can be vital – such as interview practice, help and advice with CV writing, and coaching them through the application process so they don’t miss out on the opportunities.
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Welcome to the biggest careers event ever in Gloucestershire
Nearly 2,000 students and more than 50 businesses and organisations will meet this month for the biggest careers event ever in Gloucestershire as the county takes aim at the skills gap.
By Andrew Merrell.
The transition between education and work can seem like a leap across a chasm, but businesses, organisations, schools, colleges and universities are about to do their bit to close the gap with a giant careers fair this month.
After staging a number of online careers sessions through the Covid-19 pandemic business group Circle2Success, its members and the schools involved came to one conclusion - there was a real need for what we now call ‘in-person’ events.
Feedback was not just that such a gathering would be hugely valuable, but that between pre-pandemic and now confidence in people skills had been eroded, the perceived distance between education and work had widened and there was a growing realisation that coming together would do untold good.
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