The Teacher Encounters Programme successfully reached over 40 teachers during the 2023/24 academic year, significantly enhancing their understanding of careers education and fostering strong partnerships with local employers. 

Key achievements include: 

• Increased awareness of careers education: Participating teachers deepened their knowledge of careers education best practices, enabling them to effectively integrate these principles into their classrooms. 

• Developed employer partnerships: The programme facilitated the establishment of valuable relationships between teachers and local employers, including Production Park, Wilmott Dixon, KPMG, PwC, Haribo and Burberry. These partnerships opened doors to collaborative projects, work experience opportunities, and guest speaker sessions, providing students with invaluable exposure to the world of work. 
• Enhanced student engagement: By equipping teachers with the tools and resources to deliver engaging careers education, the programme empowered them to inspire and motivate students to explore their career aspirations. 

Many of the teachers who have already taken part in this training are now developing exciting resources and projects that embed careers support and advice into the curriculum. Here’s what they said about the training: 

"I think it's been interesting and so valuable for me to get out and have a look at a local business in our community and really get into a workplace. One take away for me is to start talking about employability skills and link them to careers, especially with my year 10s." - Science Teacher 

"In the short term, a personal achievement has been embedding careers, as that is something that I've wanted to do for a long time but there never seems to be the time to do it. Whereas, by taking part in this initiative, it's kind of given me that time and opportunity to do it. I just didn't know there was so much support for careers. I just presumed that we were just left to our own devices. But that's not the case. The support and offer of making connections has become clear to me now and it is completely fantastic." - Maths Teacher  

"Listening to the apprentices speak, it was really nice to hear them speak and hear how eloquent they were. I guess it has been a reminder and refresher for me of how powerfully young people can speak to other young people – I think my students would listen to these apprentices far more than they would listen to me and take advice and knowledge from them that they wouldn’t take from me. It is a good reminder of how we can do things better or differently." - English Teacher 

"It has broadened my professional network, giving me the confidence to approach businesses and deepened my understanding of the opportunities accessible to our students...The encounters provided a way to find out which companies are flexible enough to allow our learners to take part and, for those that don't, give me a chance to question why not and find out what we could do to help...It is very refreshing to hear Willmott Dixon speak about how they are willing to adapt what they do for our students as usually employers come to us asking us to adapt to them.” - SEND Specialist Teacher