Can we engage primary school students in career conversations?

Would career conversations work in primary schools?

For me, writing an article is completely out of my comfort zone. I tend to be one of those people who sits back, reads other people's articles, but never actually comments with my own opinion. Why is that? For me, the answer is a mixture of not actively using social media platforms and, more importantly, being scared to voice my opinion publicly. Here I am, changing that narrative.

In today’s article, I’ll be discussing my initial thoughts on how we can learn from existing strategies used by careers advisers in secondary schools and use them to build strong foundations when introducing careers education to primary schools in the UK.

I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to Katherine Jennick RCDP , whose comment signposted me to Lucy Sattler ’s ‘Unusual Career Conversations’, which ultimately inspired this article.

Careers Education in Primary schools

Firstly, I want to acknowledge that careers education in primary schools isn’t something new. I currently admire the work of Jacqui Hutchinson through the ‘Building Our Futures’ learning programme. The programme, funded by Dogger Bank Wind Farm, gives pupils the opportunity to meet and work with local employers, giving them an insight into future local labour market requirements and introducing them to the range of exciting local occupations. I think it’s so important to encourage local businesses to contribute to careers education for the children in their locality. Like many of you, I’ve been keenly following Ladi Mohammed-Chapman?? with her recent trip to Finland, which has highlighted the importance of careers education being taught discreetly from the Early Years. Further to this, I’m hugely inspired by the words and work of Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE , who continues to hold the torch for careers education globally. KidZania is a shining example of how we can inspire and get children to learn about careers through role-play; again, there is so much we can learn from this!

What really excites me is that we’re on the verge of careers education being made statutory in all primary schools in England. The government has recently brought out some early careers guidance for primaries (January 2024), which shows we’re heading in the right direction. This has been a long time coming. The government hinting at careers education in primaries has rightfully created a lot of excitement and conversation in both the education and careers communities, but unfortunately, we still eagerly await the call for it to be made statutory. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long!

Where do I fit into all of this?

In late 2023, Jamie Pywell , my first-ever manager on an NCS programme in 2018, gave me the opportunity to join MYPATH to develop a primary careers education package (did somebody say planned happenstance?). Which brings me here: what an opportunity to build on Jamie’s incredible work in the secondary careers space. I have been a primary school teacher since 2019, and despite recently entering the exciting world of careers, I still teach part-time in Nottingham. I have enjoyed using my knowledge and experience to create the MYPATH primary careers resources, which will be available for the start of the 2024 academic year. Feel free to contact me or Jamie if you have any questions or enquiries about our resources for both primary and secondary schools (shameless plug).

Careers conversations in primary schools?

As mentioned earlier, Katherine’s comment led me to Lucy's newsletter, which was titled ‘Unusual Career Conversations’. This got me thinking. So much so that I've found the confidence to share my thoughts on the topic. So, can traditional career conversations be used in primaries? For me, the answer is both yes and no. It’s my current opinion that the format of careers education in secondary schools shouldn’t be copied to primary schools. As a result of this, we shouldn’t underestimate the amount of work that needs to be done to successfully introduce careers education to primaries. I will expand more on this later, but I think our common goal has to start with building a positive culture around careers education in primary schools.

Knowledge of labour market information

The role of a careers adviser is to encourage students to think about their future and explore the different pathways available to reach their goals. The idea of encouraging children to think about their future in primary schools might be too much and add to the cognitive overload that children experience each day. I actually think it’s wrong to encourage children from a young age to pick a career that they want to pursue. The expectation of knowing what we want to do in the future is somewhat outdated and could potentially limit children as they progress through their education journey. For children to meaningfully engage with career conversations in secondary schools, there is a responsibility to firstly equip them with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to engage in future conversations about careers. This is why I feel so blessed to be creating primary resources for MYPATH. One of my favourite quotes from Prof Dr Ger Graus et al. is, “Children can only aspire to what they know exists.” I think this perfectly sums up the need for children to engage with labour market information as early as possible. Upon learning and engaging with labour market information early, children have the opportunity to continuously aspire to different careers in their futures without the unnecessary pressure of being formally asked, “What do you want to be when you’re older?”

Influencing the Influencer?

As Lucy Sattler said in her newsletter, career conversations are usually “running conversations” that are built on “over multiple interactions”. However, it is unlikely, during its infancy, that careers education in primary schools will include a ‘traditional careers adviser role’. So, who is best placed to facilitate these career conversations with children? And in what format could these conversations happen? For me, the answer to the first question is simple: educators and children’s families. I’ve been following the ACS Doha Future Skills 2040 Event closely on LinkedIn and have noticed a lot of attendees referencing the importance of ‘influencing the influencer’. Considering who those key influencers are in a child's development will be crucial for developing careers education in the primary space.

Educators

One of the best things about being a teacher is the ability to mentor and guide children throughout the academic year. All educators know that our responsibilities go beyond ensuring children make academic progress. Just to be clear, my use of the term educators includes anyone in a school community: premises officers, teaching assistants, receptionists... Throughout my teaching career, I have always found that conversations outside of formal lesson times, such as at the start of the day or on the playground at break and lunchtime, are the most valuable for shaping children's attitudes and thought processes. These are the golden moments where educators have a window of opportunity to engage in early career conversations. These opportunities, paired with appropriate knowledge and skills from both the educator and child, create the foundations for what I like to call "goldilocks conversations" for engaging in early career discussions. Have I just created a new term there? There are a few problems preventing the conditions for these goldilocks conversations to occur for all children:

• Currently, not every child naturally engages with these conversations throughout their time in school.
• Currently, not all educators possess the awareness to recognise the appropriate moment to facilitate or continue these discussions.
• Currently, not all educators possess the subject knowledge to engage meaningfully in these conversations.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on these barriers and how we could overcome them in the future. For me, this links back to what I stressed earlier: building a positive culture for careers education in primaries. Once a positive culture is established, solutions can be easily implemented, such as staff CPD or even the idea of a careers advisor role in a primary school to ensure every child has the opportunity to engage in these conversations.

Family

Another opportunity in which these goldilocks conversations between a child and an influencer can occur is in their home environment. For a lot of families, this could simply be around the dinner table or during a car journey. Families, and particularly parents, play a crucial role in shaping attitudes towards careers and helping ignite passions and aspirations from a young age. Going back to comments made after the ACS Doha Future Skills 2040 Event, the question: "How can we influence the influencers?" becomes seemingly more complicated with children’s families in comparison to educators. For me, the answer to this is simple: the engagement of children’s families in the introduction of careers education is vital. Primary schools have the unique opportunity to capture parental engagement in learning, and careers education should certainly capitalise on this. Inviting parents into schools when careers education is being taught has the potential to reduce any misconceptions about careers from the home environment. If we can embed these family engagement opportunities from a young age, then we best equip families to have these ongoing goldilocks conversations in the safety of their homes. I would be interested to hear from any readers who are parents: when have you found time to talk to your children about their future aspirations?

Unusual conversations?

Parking the focus of traditional career conversations, Lucy’s article made my mind race with ideas when I read about unusual career conversations. My favourite example was: “What career would you pick in a zombie apocalypse?” I think children in Upper Key Stage 2 in primary schools would LOVE this question! What a clever way to discreetly encourage children to engage with the labour market information they currently possess! For me, this question helps reduce the pressure of children thinking they have to make a serious decision about their future in the present by entertaining a hypothetical scenario.

After reading the article, I was left thinking about the opportunities of discreetly weaving careers-related activities into other areas of the national curriculum. Writing in English stood out to me as children could write about careers through many different genres: diary entries about a working day, persuasive letters, job adverts, non-chronological reports on jobs or sectors. So many opportunities to explore! It’s all very exciting to think about the possibilities, but I’ll come back to the same point that I’ve referenced throughout this article: in order to achieve this in the future, we need to first build a positive culture around careers education in primary schools nationwide.

Thank you

If you have reached the end of this article, a massive thank you for sticking around! This was a huge personal achievement to share my own thoughts on this topic, so if you enjoyed this, please let me know. Similarly, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments as this will encourage me to continue engaging with the careers community. Let's keep this conversation going! If there is an appetite for more content like this, I will gladly write more articles in the future covering all things careers in primary.