The Future Starts Now: Year 8 Gets Future Ready

Future Ready delivery is well underway! Over the last few weeks, the Bristol WORKS delivery team have been busy getting to the know the 15 cohorts of Year 8 students on the programme.

Delivery kicked off in February with launch sessions in each school. Students were introduced to the 3-year long project through a variety of skills-based games and a reflective skills mapping activity. There was an excited buzz throughout the launch sessions as students engaged well with the hands-on activities and looked forward to the upcoming sessions. Before they break up for the summer, students will meet employers, go on trips and take part in real-work challenges to give them a taster of different workplaces and identify important skills for the world of work.

Our second in-school session focused on professional communication skills. Students had the opportunity to practice their newfound skills with employer volunteers in a game called ‘Guess My Job’. Small groups of students had 5 minutes with an employer to ask them questions and ‘guess the job’. Students rotated around 4 or 5 different employers, getting the opportunity to hear about a variety of jobs and sectors. As the session went on, students got more confident and were asking great questions to try and pin down exact job titles and professions. For some of these students it might have been the first time they’d interacted with an employer in a professional setting, we were very impressed with their levels of engagement and their curious questions.

 

A huge thank you to all the employers involved in these sessions and well done to the students for engaging so well in an environment they might not be used to!

* Bristol WORKS’ Future Ready programme gives under-served school students from 15 schools across Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucester and BANES, experiences of different organisations and career paths. We will be working with students for 3 years (from year 8 to year 10) to get them 10 days of meaningful experiences of work by the end of the programme. Funded by the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority Careers Hub.