PROFESSOR SIR JOHN HOLMAN, EMERITUS PROFESSOR AT UNIVERSITY OF YORK – SUPPLEMENTARY WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0076)

Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry

At the end of the Lords committee hearing, the Chair Lord Shipley invited us to send our thoughts on ‘At what age should young people do work experience? Should it be voluntary or mandatory?’  My thoughts are as follows.

In the 2013-14 international study that led to the Gatsby careers benchmarks, we saw a range of practice across the six countries we visited. In Germany, for example, we saw how students were given both breadth and depth in their experience of workplaces: breadth in the range of employers encountered, and depth in the sense of a more in-depth experience of a particular workplace. This led us to formulate two benchmarks: ‘Encounters with employers and employees’ (Benchmark 5), and ‘Experiences of the Workplace’ (Benchmark 6).

Benchmark 6 is the closest to what is often called ‘work experience’ in England. The benchmark calls for two periods of work experience: one pre-16 and one post-16. This reflects the best practice which we saw in countries like Finland, where students may have up to three periods of work experience during secondary school.

My answer to Lord Shipley’s question is that I would recommend that, in accordance with Gatsby Benchmark 6, students should have one period of work experience before the age of 16, and one after that age. In many schools, the pre-16 work experience happens in Year 10, and that is a good time because students are old enough to be able to apply their experience to future study and training choices, but not yet at the pressurised time of GCSE exam preparation.

In common with all the Gatsby Careers Benchmarks, I believe that Benchmark 6 should be strongly recommended, but not compulsory.

22nd July 2021