TEACHERS’ GUIDE Education and employers working together for young people Education and Employers Taskforce

Making contact

After the vision has been created, the school's or college Employer-engagement Coordinator will have a clear idea of what employer engagement is needed. The Coordinator will know what kind of topics are to be covered and will have an idea of the kinds of people who will have the required knowledge and skills.

There are two ways in which the school or college can then make contact with an employer: through a broker (with a national or specific focus) or directly.

1. Contacting an employer through a broker

Education-employer brokers help employers, schools and colleges to work together, in order to assist in the provision of work-related learning for students. These brokers operate on both national and regional levels. Many local brokers worked with the Taskforce as part of October 2010's Visit our Schools week, the national campaign to encourage employers to meet with principals and head teachers to have a practical discussion over how they can best work together.  For details of these local brokers, the areas they cover and the services they offer, click here.

Business in the Community BitC is a business-led charity comprising 700 of the UK's top companies. The Education Team aims to help young people achieve their potential through effective education-business links. It does this by providing an understanding of education, identifying best practice, supporting and developing activities and evaluating impact in enterprise, employability, and leadership and management. www.bitc.org.uk/education
Enterprise Education Trust A national business education and enterprise charity that empowers young people to realise their potential through business and enterprise. The Trust brings together Business Dynamics, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), Blue Skies and Achievers International, all of which increase students' knowledge of business and improve and develop key employability skills. www.enterprise-education.org.uk/
HTI (Heads, Teachers and Industry) A not-for-profit social enterprise working in partnership with business, education and Government to develop exceptional leaders in education and enhance the employability of young people. Founded in 1986, 12,000 teachers have taken part in leadership programmes and over eight million students have indirectly derived benefit from their work. HTI is now supported by nearly 200 companies. www.hti.org.uk/
Industrial Trust A charity that enthuses and educates young people aged eight to 21 about careers that will sustain the UK economy. The Trust provides educational events in the work place for students, industrial experiences for teachers and support to companies wishing to engage with education. Tens of thousands of students and teachers benefit from these experiences and involve several hundred businesses. www.industrialtrust.org.uk
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network A UK organisation that promotes science, technology, engineering and maths awareness, especially among young people. It aims to help ensure there is a flow of well-motivated, high-quality people moving from schools into careers using science, technology, engineering and maths, and prepares young people for the technological world they live in. www.stemnet.org.uk/
Young Enterprise Offers a range of enterprise-learning solutions, annually reaching over 324,000 students and 5,500 schools and colleges through support from 3,500 businesses. Some offer students the chance to run their own company; others are built around seminars, using games and activities to help students develop skills and capabilities for enterprise, business and the world of work. www.young-enterprise.org.uk

b) Brokers with a narrow focus

As well as the national bodies that provide a broad overarching view of how employers might best work with schools and colleges, there are a range of other bodies that support the matching of employers with schools and colleges for specific purposes:

Apprenticeships: This website is helpful for employers looking for apprentices or vice versa. There is a range of information on apprenticeships and a facility for employers to register their apprenticeship vacancies and search for potential apprentices.

Every Child a Reader: This collaboration between charitable trusts, the business sector and the Government aims to secure sustainable investment in early literacy intervention; it also evaluates how and where to provide intensive support in a national context.

CILT: CILT, The National Centre for Languages, works to convince people of all ages, at all stages of learning and in all walks of life, the benefits of learning and using more than one language. CILT supports the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) in implementing policies to improve the teaching and learning of languages and provide independent advice on all aspects of language teaching, learning and use.

The National Literacy Trust (NLT): An independent charity that aims to raise literacy standards, the National Literacy Trust provides programmes, information and research to help businesses promote literacy.

The National STEM Centre provides support for STEM teachers and lecturers through its leading role within the government's STEM Programme, and via a large library of teaching and learning resources. The Centre holds the largest accessible collection of such resources in the UK for STEM subjects across the 5-19 age range. These collections include multimedia, print, practical teaching materials, and research publications, many of which are available online via the Centre's fully searchable eLibrary.

School Governors' One-Stop Shop (SGOSS): SGOSS recruits skilled volunteers to support schools by becoming school governors. It also acts as a free brokerage service to schools with governor vacancies.

The Trident Trust: The Trident Trust is a charity that helps young people develop their employability and enterprise skills. It offers a free matching service, which helps employers become involved in the work placement process.

2. Contacting an employer directly

• what the employer does
• the kinds of people who work there
• how many people work there.

Finding the right contact

Once a suitable employer has been found, the school must then proceed to finding the right person to contact within the organisation. This is not always easy. The answer might be found:

• during research into the employer
• as a result of a conversation with reception staff
• as a result of personal contacts with the employer.

Remember that the local EBPO can help. Visit www.iebe.org.uk for more information.

Try to contact the most senior person possible. When a member of senior management is "on board", that person becomes an ally who will make things happen! While a senior manager won't work on individual projects, going "to the top" means that a link with the school will have been secured at a strategic level.

Once the link is secured, the senior manager will ideally delegate responsibilities for the day-to-day management of the relationship to an employee. By having coordinators in both the school and the employer organisation, projects and ideas for engagement can be planned efficiently and circulated to the relevant staff members/employees.

Diploma consortia have developed some good practice in making contact with employers. Visit the Diploma support programme website to find out how Diploma consortia suggest contacting employers.

Approaches from employers

There are occasions when a school or college is approached by an employer for partnership. Schools and colleges must have the mechanisms in place to ensure that such approaches are accepted and used to the greatest benefit of both school/college and employer.

Responding to the contact

Employers are often unsure who to contact in a school, and sometimes call the wrong person - which often results in their call never being returned. To ensure this doesn't happen, all members of staff must be briefed on the procedure that is followed if an employer makes an enquiry.

Such enquiries are likely to be made in the form of a telephone call or letter to the head teacher. However, other forms of enquiry may come through:

• letters to other members of the school/college staff
• chance meetings between members of the school/college staff and employers or their employees
• conversations between school/college staff and parents, carers, governors, etc. at school events, open days, parents' evenings and other school events.

All forms of enquiry must be passed on to the person who is responsible for employer engagement in the school. The person with this responsibility - the employer engagement coordinator - will have procedures in place to take forward the partnership offer.

Procedures for taking forward approaches from employers

Each coordinator will establish their own set of procedures, but the following considerations should be made:

• All staff (administrative; teaching; management; ancillary; maintenance; security; etc.) should be aware of who to pass any enquiry or contact on to. The employer engagement coordinator may wish to develop a notification form or pro forma email which is available to all staff
• When noting an enquiry, the staff must ascertain the nature of the interest, the name of the person and organisation, the contact details and any preference for timing/form of contact.
• The coordinator must have a "standard response time" to enquiries so that employers/enquirers do not feel that they have been forgotten or their engagement is not wanted.

Discussion between the proposer and coordinator needs to establish if the proposer has a type of support/partnership in mind. If the proposer does have something in mind, the coordinator must:

• prepare a project proposal description that matches the proposer's support/partnership ideas are matched to school/college staff's interests and activities. Look at a document on auditing the range of employer engagement in your department for more help on this
• bring the proposer and the school staff together, facilitating their agreement and project realisation
• ensure that the proposer is kept fully briefed on the progress of matching their aims with the school/college staff's interests and activities (and is immediately informed of any delays or suggested modifications to the proposal).

If the proposer has no particular project in mind, the coordinator must:

• spend some time explaining and illustrating the types of project in which he/she might wish to become involved. See Types of engagement for more information of the different types of involvement available
• gauge the interests and potential from the proposer in order to make sure that projects proposed to them are within the range of their areas of expertise and capacity to deliver.
• establish the reasons why the proposer wants to work with the school - in order to ensure that their objectives are met and their expected outcomes are successfully achieved.

The coordinator will then have a clear picture of the proposer's interests, objectives and capacities, and will be able to match the offer to colleagues' requirements in school. Look at a document on auditing the range of employer engagement in your department for more information on this. The coordinator must keep the proposer notified of any progress on matching the offer to the school staff's requirements.

The procedures described in the document are adaptable and form a good template for the ways in which project agreements can be reached. These procedures also apply to circumstances where:

• the school/college has approached employers for education-employer partnerships
• the school is receiving brokerage support through an organisation such as an Education Business Partnership Organisation. (Visit the Institute for Education Business Excellence website for more information on Education Business Partnership Organisations.)