Careers in the Classroom – Embedding Careers Education in the Curriculum

Students, and their ambitions, still exist outside of the career advisors office but schools’ curriculums don’t always contain space for teaching them about life after leaving school. Hence, the inclusion of Gatsby benchmark number 4: Linking Curriculum Learning To Careers.

This benchmark requires teachers to link curriculum learning with careers. Subject teachers specifically, are to highlight the progression routes for their subject and the relevance of the knowledge and skills developed in their subject for a wide range of career pathways. And while this sounds great in theory, teachers don’t often have time for independent career lessons in their schedule. That’s why this article lists suggestions for meeting benchmark 4 without adding extra time to a set curriculum.

Firstly, The Careers and Enterprise Company divides the approaches to embedding careers in the curriculum into three elements:

Element 1: Relevance of Subjects/Programmes of Study

This element dictates that all subject teachers should help students connect their subjects/programmes with potential career pathways.

Some examples of how to do this include:

• Displays of Subjects Linking to Different Career and Educational Pathways – you could display famous or interesting people who have studied your subject, or worked in a field closely linked to your subject, or have posters showing different career options within your subject. Some downloadable examples of these posters are available here.

• Signposting Transferable Skills on Lesson Slides – use a different logo to represent each skill, so students can spot, at a glance, how a certain topic you’re teaching will provide them with valuable skills for when they leave school or college.

  
  

Element 2: Making Links to Careers from the Curriculum

This element asks for teachers to support students by stressing how knowledge and skills developed in their curriculum learning helps gain entry to, and be more effective within, a wide range of pathways and occupations.

You can do this by planting connections between already established curriculum classes and events and career options. For example:

• A Careers Objective for Each School Trip – provide the opportunity for students to learn about the variety of jobs that are carried out at the location they’re visiting

• Plan for Expected Curriculum Roadblocks with Career Motivation – In a case study of the Lift Schools trust, teachers collaborated to brainstorm a list of the more difficult topics, either to teach or for students to grasp, and found employers that utilised these topics in their jobs engaging with them to provide students with context for how these topics and the skills they teach are used in real jobs. If employed well, this method could provide students with motivation to learn difficult subjects.

  
  

Element 3: Embedding Curriculum Learning in the Context of the World of Work

This element aids students by using existing frameworks to prepare students for the world of work. 

This can take varied forms. For example:

• 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 learn and 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 for the challenges of exams as well as an adult working under pressure in a workplace.

• Augment Homework/Classwork with Student-Led Research – you can add a research question to certain assignments, in or out of class. For example, how would a [insert job position here] use what you’ve learned in this unit? This can inform students of potential related careers and remind them of the importance of the current topic.

Other fun ways to complete this benchmark are:

• Display Unique/Unconventional CVs – make posters of various CVs that show a professional life widely lived, including the skills necessary for each distinct, and potentially unrelated, job. This serves the dual purpose of informing students about the needed skills for varied jobs while assuring them that winding career paths are normal.

• Career Talks – take a break from actively teaching by inviting a professional in a field relevant to your subject to come speak to your students. You can even make it interactive and motivate your students to participate and pay attention by having them vote on and choose the professional (as long as you can guarantee their presence!)

• Educational Documentaries – if you like the idea of taking a break from talking, you can find relevant and educational documentaries to show your students, and as long as you can provide the video for them, maybe even include watching it as a light assignment. Again, having them vote on documentaries they want to learn from can motivate them to engage with the material.

• The ‘Guess My Job’ Game – this easy to prepare and play game can both teach and engage students. You can make the answers as wide or subject-related as you wish. Read game instructions and more here.

• The ‘Challenging Stereotypes’ Activity – help break your students out of stereotypical thinking while simultaneously opening discussions around different jobs. An example of a Challenging Gender Stereotypes in Careers activity is available here.

If you are a Careers Lead, it is also important to ensure you are aware of all of the careers related activity that takes place in individual subjects and that this information is tracked. This form can be sent out to all department leads in order to gather a complete picture and evidence of all careers in the curriculum activities.

Hopefully, you now feel more empowered to help your students and meet a schooling standard. And feel free to go forth and impart this knowledge on others.