Quick wins for meeting Gatsby Benchmark 4

This month, Unifrog’s UK Education Lead, Charley Fowler, was a keynote speaker at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) curriculum conference.

Here, she shares her quick wins for meeting Gatsby Benchmark 4: ‘Linking curriculum learning to careers’, and top tips on how Unifrog can help.
 

Why does meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks matter?

The Gatsby Benchmarks are the Department for Education’s framework for careers provision in England.

According to a Unifrog survey of 5,500 students, 59% consider employability the most important factor in deciding what to do after school or college. Meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks helps students make informed decisions about their best next steps and helps them prepare for the world of work.

Students have also shown an interest in linking subjects to careers through their use of Unifrog. On our Careers library, students have the option to search by things like keywords, personality type, and skills. Searching ‘by subject’ is the second most popular route (after ‘by interest’).

On top of this, research by The Careers and Enterprise Company has shown that careers in the curriculum have a positive impact on students in three key ways:

1. Personal effectiveness
2. Career readiness
3. Educational outcomes
    

Five quick wins

Here are Charley’s top tips for meeting Gatsby Benchmark 4:

• Departmental displays of how subjects link to different career and educational pathways – for example, you could display famous or interesting people who have studied your subject, or worked in a field closely linked to your subject.
   
• A careers objective for each school trip – for example, the opportunity for students to learn about the variety of jobs that are carried out at the location they’re visiting.
   
• Linking school values and skills development frameworks to future pathways – if you use frameworks like a SkillsBuilder Framework, or have your own bespoke set of values students have to evidence in some way, make links between those and what employers, universities, and colleges value. For example, highlight the importance of developing resilience as a skill so students can take on the challenges of exams, and how they can later apply this as adults working under pressure in a workplace.
   
• Signposting transferable skills on lesson PowerPoints – use a different logo to represent each skill, so students can spot, at a glance, opportunities where they’re developing skills which will be valuable when they leave school or college.
   
• Teacher ‘CVs’ outside classrooms highlighting interesting and unusual past jobs and qualifications – discovering that teachers may have had previous experience in other sectors of work prior to teaching can open students’ eyes to different pathways.
   

Five ways you can use Unifrog to help

Want to save time and effort on lesson prep? Here are five quick ways Unifrog can help you meet the benchmark:

• Encounters with employers – our growing community of employer partners includes household names like Virgin Atlantic, PwC, Goldman Sachs, and Asda. Through co-hosting our webinars, giving demos at our careers fairs, and helping us design our courses (coming soon!), their employees give young people a feel for what working at a company like theirs is really like, and whether it would be the right pathway for them.
   
• 1,000+ career profiles – all with up-to-date LMI - linked to students' favourite school subjects – the Careers library categorises careers by sector, helping students to explore roles they never knew existed and learn about factors like entry requirements, skills, and career pathways.
   
• Lesson templates – from September 2023, the new Careers Year Plan will include links to age-appropriate starter and plenary templates which can be included in any subject lesson or used during tutor time. They will connect subject knowledge with skills development, recording activities, researching careers and subjects, and reflecting on future career pathways.
   
• Subjects library profiles linked to relevant careers – on each Subjects library profile, you’ll find relevant careers and career sectors, so you can show your students how studying each one can link directly to next steps.
   
• Staff training delivered by Unifrog on how teachers can use Unifrog in their classroom – speak to your Account Manager about delivering a staff training session to subject teachers on how they can make the most of Unifrog as part of their lessons. 
   

Want to know more?

If you’re not yet one of our school, college, employer, or university partners:

• Request a demo here (we'll then set up a meeting with you), or
• Call us on +4420 3372 5991 or email us at info@unifrog.org

You can also check out our guide to making the most out of Unifrog.