News Year 10 Futures Focus 02.03.2023

This week has been a fantastic opportunity for our Year 10 students to look beyond the academic curriculum and to discover some of the skills they will need in their future working lives and to develop their thinking about Sixth Form choices, university courses and career pathways.

The week began with an introductory assembly from Mrs Armstrong outlining the objectives for the week and in particular talking about Tuesday’s programme when the whole year-group was ‘off-timetable’. The day included talks and activities with a number of experts and organisations and we were delighted to welcome the London Interdisciplinary School who led sessions on complex problem solving and explored the need for an interdisciplinary response to problems ranging from social inequality to environmental concerns. Pupils generated ideas about what interlinking skills were necessary for them to focus on and built their ‘dream employment team’ to tackle a complex problem.

In addition, we welcomed InvestIn who led sessions on trends in the employment and recruitment market and on the skills that employers are looking for in their undergraduate applicants, beyond their academic credentials. In the afternoon, we continued our exploration of Futures by focusing on how universities are adapting to changes in the employment market. We were joined by some of our present Upper Sixth students who talked to Year 10 about their own degree choices and their journey to making these course decisions, which included chemical engineering, design engineering and social anthropology. Pupils then delved deeper into the development of social entrepreneurship with talks by LJ Silverman who runs the LSE Generate Programme and Chris Fellingham, Co-Founder and Director of ARC Accelerator a consultancy which helps universities such as the University of Oxford create startups from social science, humanities and the arts as well as social ventures. Year 10 pupils had a chance to review the World Economic Forum’s skills for the 2025 employment market and consider how they have been engaging with them and how they could focus on them more as they progress through the school.

On Friday we were joined for a special assembly led by Sarah McLaren who is an Economics graduate who moved into investment banking and from there into the world of AI. Her inspiring talk helped pupils to see the reality of what their earlier sessions had aimed to illustrate – most graduates will work in a wide variety of spheres and have several entirely different careers in their lifetime so considering transferable skills is key. We hope pupils enjoyed engaging with these early explorations of the world of higher education and careers and can use it as a springboard as they transition into the Sixth Form.