What Great Careers Education Looks Like in an International Setting: Andy Homden, CEO of Consilium Education

Andy Homden is the founder and CEO of Consilium Education. Born in the UK, Andy is an alumnus of Oxford University and has spent over three decades working in international education. He has been a teacher and leader in schools around the world, leading on new school projects in countries such as Malaysia, Turkey, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

Consilium Education is a consultancy of highly experienced education professionals offering support with school start-ups, strategic planning, preparation for inspection or accreditation, feasibility/bench-marking studies and campus refurbishment. They also offer professional development programmes and careers advice for teachers who wish to work internationally. Consilium also publishes International Teacher Magazine.

We caught up with Andy to ask about his own career journey, and to get the lowdown on what he has seen working well in 21st-century ready careers education in the many schools he has been a part of. You can read on for the full interview or watch a three minute clip on our YouTube Series here.

Xperienceships: We like to start with a personal question. What kind of career experiences prepared you for the job that you have today?

Andy Homden: Well, I suppose as I'm an international education consultant, my experience in international schools was the most important thing that prepared me to do the sort of thing I'm doing today.

I was lucky enough along the way to work in some really wonderful schools and was lucky to have had those experiences and to have met a lot of terrific people who I learned a lot from, they were always worth listening to. That sort of general broad experience has helped me do the things that I do. One person stands out above all the others: a guy called Ron Stones, who was my principal at the British School of Jakarta. Ron asked me to do things that I would never have thought of doing before. 

We were a little primary school, and we wanted to be an (age) 3- 18 school. I was brought in as the head of secondary and Ron said to me; “we've got up to year eight: now, we're going to take it all the way through to year 13. I want you to design a timetable for a curriculum for years eight to 13. And you've got a month to do it.” So it was a challenge that he threw to me - just get on with it, report back, and then we'll see how you go. 

We worked with fantastic staff that he had brought to the school. And we were the sort of team working together that bounced ideas off each other. And at the same time, we were planning the new campus, how to staff and fill the campus with a curriculum, and develop a set of ideas and principles that would take us forward. 

As with all things in setting up a new school, you've got to be very conscious of budget: you mustn't spend too much and you don't want to spend too little. So we talked about how to get just the right number of teaching staff as we opened the new campus. We projected it five years into the future and then two years later, we were starting GCSEs, IGCSEs, and then the International Baccalaureate. So we were given an opportunity as a young staff to learn by doing. Ron was always looking at us over his shoulder or in meetings every now and again, making sure that we were on track. And the exercise we did then I still use that methodology, when people come to us and say, okay, we need a feasibility study, do you think this school will work in a certain context, that's pretty much the methodology we still use.

 So thank you for Ron, for that opportunity. I went on to a number of other schools where I was Principal. When we stopped full time salaried employment, we thought, okay, let's give it a go and see if anybody else would find this methodology, or what we offer useful. That was nearly seven years ago now. So it was a great grounding for what we do now.

X.  That's a brilliant story. Thank you for sharing it. Experiencing that Theory Y style of leadership: you know, “I trust you, I can that you can handle this, I'm here if you need me”, we imagine learning in that way, you've passed it on to other staff that you worked with later on and gave them a similar task. 

AH: That's exactly what you've got to try and do. It's difficult sometimes, because you can see people making mistakes, and you want to help them and it's instinct to help them and you've got to help them in the right kind of way because they've got to learn from their mistakes. I know that I made mistakes when I was working with Ron and he was absolutely brilliant and very very diplomatic in allowing me to make my mistakes, and then nudging me back.

X: What should great schools do for students to develop the skillsets that are necessary for the changing future that we know we're in? We'd love to hear from you and your expertise, about when careers education has really helped students develop skills that enabled them to go on and have future success.

AH: There are so many different questions in that question. And it's difficult to know exactly where to start. But let's say one thing first: you've got to recognise the world around you is changing so rapidly, and you've got to be ready for that. But you don't know quite what you're going to be ready for. Because it's going to be changing, even in the six years that we've been doing this business, our business has changed. And the training after I left full time education was good. But now I have to update it.

Being continually open to updating is very important. As the saying goes, nothing goes out of fashion so fast as the cutting edge.

The second and I think probably the more important skill is just to be aware of what's happening, and to think about it all the time. So in that sense, I don't think the priorities of educators or schools have changed. This has always been so important for me as a teacher. In other words, in the words of John Berger, who wrote Ways of Seeing in the 1970s: I can I can look at it, but am I really seeing it?

And that, in my view is what kids have got to do, everyone has got to do as they go forward into the future, they've got to look and see. 

Careers education is not a standalone, it's not a bolt on, it's part of everything. And as you’re made aware of what you are seeing and the relevance of what you're seeing whether it's in science, or technology, or history, or English literature, you can start to make connections that might interest you. You've got to be interested in what you do. So try and give kids as many experiences of things that they might be interested in. This is quite apart from careers education, it’s the job of the school. And it's to see if they're any good at doing anything, for one thing, and if they like doing it. 

And the other thing I think is equally important is if they're any good at watching something or seeing something or just enjoying somebody else do something. So, for example, you might think music education is about learning how to play the piano or the flute or learning how to sing. But really, it's more about learning how to be an audience member and appreciate what someone is doing when you see them perform. And when you've had a go yourself and when you've been exposed to it, and you see someone perform and you think wow, how do they do that? - you don't really understand what they're doing until you've had a go yourself. So how to be a participant and to be also a really appreciative member of an audience, it is what I've always tried to do with education as a whole. I think that applies to careers, and to what you might do in the future as well to making kids aware, making them see things, making them hear things, and to think about things. So that is the tip of the iceberg of careers education that you probably don't hear about. But it is linked to everything that should be in a good careers education.

X: That's what we believe, as well. We wonder if you've seen any really good examples of that, in your career: encouraging those students to look outside of the curriculum or helping them make links to the curriculum?

AH: I think what gives me greater pleasure is to see kids developing, developing their general understanding and perception and their powers of perception, and to analyse situations around them. So you can introduce this to them at a very, very early age. We're talking about three and four years old, I think it's very important to see how they accumulate these experiences and start joining the pieces to make a whole picture. 

So to put it together with other things, so that they can express themselves about what they're seeing. So for example, two kids that stick in my mind. I was assigned by the head of science as a teaching assistant, because he reckoned they couldn't speak good enough English. I ended up staying in that class for six weeks working with those kids, and my job was to try and bring out their English skills. He was teaching all the science, I was just focusing on two young Russian lads, as it happens, who were really into their science, and then helping them understand not only the terminology, but the ordinary use of English that the teacher was using as he went through. I didn't understand the science, but it was great to see those kids a bit later on, they would stop me and then have a conversation with me about what they were doing in science. And you could see that their interest had been really grand, because they understood and then they could and took pleasure in expressing their ideas about what a variable was, or what a dependent variable was, or what a constant was, and they loved using the language. When a person loves using the language, they're interested in it, and they want to know more. To see that growing understanding, you knew that they would have no problem in finding something they enjoyed. Six years on, I bet they're at a good university doing a good science course.

X: You're a consultant now doing feasibility studies helping new schools set themselves up. What are some innovative best practices that you're seeing now on the ground, connected to this embedding of careers in new schools?

AH: I think the best practice gives kids a direct experience. The best thing I ever saw was when you got someone who was doing something that they cared about, brought them into school to talk about it, or had a small group and just got the conversation going. I remember particularly someone who became a good friend who was a vet, and just came in and talked about being a vet. She wasn't just content to let them ask her, she asked them, and she got a conversation going. And that, to me, is the best form of careers education you can get. 

Also, getting kids out into the workforce for work experience, as it is important that they learn what they don't want to do, as well as what they might want to do. I think trying to put them in the way of people who have done real things. You can do this in a number of different ways. So for example, one of my favourite radio programs, which is also a podcast is, is a program which is currently on right now called The Life Scientific. What he does is he interviews a scientist every week. Getting kids to listen to that sort of thing, that to me, is what everyone should be doing: whether they're scientists or concert pianists, and there are a number of podcasts and programs right there on the BBC, which I think are fantastic. So I would encourage people to do that ? 

Thanks, Andy! You can read more of International Teacher Magazine and about Consilium education here.