Our Head of National Competitions and Careers Dee Aylett-Smith explains how our careers resources and training programmes can help to inspire and develop young people following their GCSE results.
GCSE results day – a day that provides mixed emotions: both excitement and trepidation!
For young people getting their results, they may have many questions and concerns:
- How will the results be interpreted by an employer?
- What are my options?
- What could my next step be?
- Do I want to do vocational qualification, apprenticeship or A-levels?
- What will these options lead onto in my future?
- Where do I find out and establish my next step?
- How do I know what skills I have?
- What does success look like?
- I have no luck – good things don’t happen to me…
Into the unknown
Today’s figures show that the claimant count has risen the most for young people, with nearly one in seven young people now claiming benefits, and Labour Force Survey data has seen a rise in young people not in full time education or employment to over one million, the highest it’s been since 2015.
We all have an opportunity now to come together to inspire and empower young people and dispel the questions and concerns they may have. Most importantly we need to help them to understand they can succeed! But just how can we help them breakdown their short-term, achievable, goals to lay the foundation for long term success and ambition?
WorldSkills UK: inspiring and developing excellence at work
At WorldSkills UK, we continue to raise the standards in apprenticeships and technical education so more young people get the best start in work and life.
As a key influencer to a young person’s decision-making process how can you ensure they have the information to support them in making that informed next step?
Through our digital content and development programmes we inspire and develop thousands of young people each year to get the best start in work and life within technical and vocational career pathways. We do this by focusing upon technical skills development, careers development alongside building resilience and mindset.
As part of that first critical step it is important for young people to explore their transferrable skills and what options are available to them. Our digital Careers Advice Toolkit is a free resource that has multiple modules, but the ones that would be most helpful in the initial stages of a career journey include:
• Thinking about your future
• Building skills for life and work
• Understanding Apprenticeships, Educational and Technical Pathways
• Preparing your CV
What you will discover within the modules is content to guide you through, quizzes to help your young person identify next steps and lots of role model videos and inspiring case studies to provide peer-to-peer inspiration.
Wellbeing and Resilience
We recognise that young people are reported to be struggling with the social isolation more than any other age group during the pandemic, and that this can affect people’s mental wellbeing, which tends to have knock-on effect for the decisions people make relating to their future plans.
We have a module within the toolkit that focuses upon the topic of mental and physical wellbeing and stresses the need for both to be nurtured. It contains a video with tips on how to stay positive, motivated and talks about how to increase your mental resilience when faced with setbacks and shifting scenarios.
As with all the other lessons in the toolkit, it also signposts to specialist information that is available to help young people with these topics.
The toolkit is completely free to use, and we are continually updating with new exciting lessons and content – so make the most of this great resource and download today!
In the spirit of breaking down goals into achievable steps, our digital Careers Advice Toolkit is the starting point. Once those young people have transitioned to their next step, which may include a traineeship, T-level, apprenticeship or a full-time college course, why not join our National Competitions programme? Here young people who take part will have their technical skill development and employability skills evolve to a world-class standard!
