In 2019, we piloted an experiment for SMEs to host teachers as part of a ‘teacher work experience’ initiative.
Building on our experiences from running the Teacher Inset day and Work Experience projects, we want to explore how we can accelerate the learning of secondary and primary teachers about the workplace.
Our experience is that small, growing companies struggle to resource supervising a school student for a week, but are not short of the goodwill.
We also are very aware that the ‘system’ gives modern-day teachers very little opportunity to get into the workplace (other than their own!), so how can we expect teachers to fully translate skills and careers advice to their charges in the context of what modern day working environments, practices, technologies and industries look like.
We are therefore exploring how we can operate a ‘teacher work experience scheme’ as we think that small companies will feel much better able to host adults for a few days or or a week, than a 15 year-old. And the leverage could be significant.
We partnered with our close friends at Teach First and ran our first placements in June 2019. Those were really successful and we had some great feedback from the teachers, especially around the language and style of communication in a business environment, which is now being employed by the teachers at Digitech Studio School.