West Yorkshire
Careers Hub
The West Yorkshire Careers Hub is delivered by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and co-funded by the Careers & Enterprise Company.
It is a hub of opportunities, resources, training and guidance to ensure every young person in West Yorkshire has access to a gold-plated careers service.
Who is part of the West Yorkshire Careers Hub?
The West Yorkshire Careers Hub is a network of:
- A team of advisers from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority
- Over 180 schools and colleges
- 158,000 students, of which 32,000 are eligible for free school meals
- 580 Enterprise Advisers and Business Volunteers from local businesses across West Yorkshire.
We’re proud of the network we have built and strive to increase this network even further to ensure all young people in West Yorkshire are given the opportunities needed to become ready for future education, training or employment.
8 Gatsby Benchmarks
The Gatsby Benchmarks serve as a framework for world-class careers provision and have been adopted as part of the Government's Careers Strategy, statutory guidance for schools and guidance for colleges.
Support through the West Yorkshire Careers Hub has helped schools and colleges to:
- Improve achievements across all eight benchmarks by 100% since 2022.
- Increase the average Benchmarks achieved across West Yorkshire from 5.5 to 5.7, with our SEND institutions achieving an average of 5.8 Benchmarks.
- 94% of schools and colleges are now achieving three benchmarks or more.
- Since 2022 the number of schools and colleges achieving two benchmarks or less has been reduced by over 50% (from 24 schools to 11 schools).
Supporting young people to thrive
Since 2022 we have supported thousands of young people to make informed decisions about their future careers.
These young people have gained confidence and new skills, knowledge and experiences of the workplace, made connections with local employers and accessed opportunities that wouldn’t have been available to them had their school or college not been part of the West Yorkshire Careers Hub.
Find out more by reading or watching our case studies.
Giving equal opportunities to young people with SEND
We know how much young people with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) can bring to a workplace.
Over the last year we've supported young people with SEND to feel confident and ready to start employment.
We've provided teachers and employers with toolkits to help them support students and provide workplace experiences.
The results have been incredible.
Ensuring educators have the knowledge and experience needed to support their students
We have many teaching resources to support young people gain employability and transferable skills.
We provide national and local careers information and guidance and through tools such as Compass and the Careers Impact System we're supporting educators to provide a gold plated careers service to the regions young people.
We've supported 40 teachers to visit local workplaces and learn about the careers available in West Yorkshire. Teachers have been able to take this insight back to their classroom and prepare their students with real life experience.
Introducing employers to young talent and raising awareness of their industry
Research shows that if a young person has four or more meaningful encounters with an employer they’re 86% more likely to be employed or in education or training and can earn up to 22% more during their career.
This proves how vital it is that we connect local employers with our schools and colleges.
We've connected 580 Enterprise Advisers and Business Volunteers to schools and colleges across West Yorkshire. From this we've gained insight into skills shortages and helped educators to shape their lessons in a way that will support young people to gain the skills needed locally.
Read or watch our case studies to find out more.
Get involved
Whether you’re an employer or a school or college, please get in touch to discuss ways we can support you.