Young people overwhelmingly state that their family are more influential in the career choices they make than their friends, their teachers and careers staff in school. Follow this link to read some research about how much parents & carers are really key to the decisions your students make.
Through our Better Choices Leadership Programme and the GM ‘All our Futures’ Conference you told us that parents and carers is an area of careers you’d like to develop further. There are many useful links in our resource section that your parents and carers may find useful and that you can use to develop your approach to working with parents and carers in an innovative way and create long-lasting partnerships.
However, we think that you are the best resource to influence and guide parents so that they are knowledgeable and well- informed. Your Greater Manchester colleagues are probably doing something amazing right now – why re-invent the wheel!
We would really encourage you to let us know how you involve your parents and carers in helping your students map out their futures.
We can help you capture the information or put you in touch with a school where we know there is really high quality involvement from parents & carers in careers education.
Here are 5 simple ways to start involving parents as mentioned by you at our Better Choices celebration...
1. Create a section on your website about careers provision in your school/college and dedicate a page to parents and careers. Use some of the links in the resources section of Bridge.
2. Involve a parent or parent governor as a stakeholder in your career strategy development.
3. If parents are hard to engage in careers events or you just haven’t the time piggy back another event already happening and weave in the career message you want to promote.
4. If work experience is a challenge, organise a ‘take your child to work day’ or offer them access to a careers adviser. That’s what North Chadderton High School, Oldham did!
5. Get an Apprenticeship Ambassador or alumni to deliver your message for you about their chosen career path. Schools who do this have told us it makes a difference to how parents and carers see the opportunities for their child.