As John, who as well as being a beneficiary of the initiative acts as an ambassador for Primary Futures, explains: “In our case, they are short, sweet, half-an-hour sessions that the children really love; the children are always enthralled.

 “As a school, we’re committed to having a number of career-related events each year, both physical and virtual, all enabled through the Primary Futures portal. The most successful of these, without doubt, is when my pupils meet visitors from the world of work face to face. That has, in turn, led us down the route of engaging parents better. We now get parents wanting to come in and talk about what they do, because they see the importance of empowering our children. We have recently had a parent who talked about their own tree surgery business, a vet and a nurse, for example,” he adds.

Once registered, schools can access the volunteer database and use the self-service platform to invite volunteers from different jobs, sectors and career routes to speak with children. These can be virtual or in-person events.

Alongside actual talks, there is a database of pre-recorded video sessions (see example above) that schools can use in the classroom. These cover a broad range of topics; for example, gender stereotypes (see ‘Uplifting futures: tackling gender stereotypes (key stage two)’ and ‘Budding futures: tackling gender stereotypes (key stage one/year three)’), TV and technology, and specific jobs or careers, such as working for the NHS. Primary Futures can also work with school leaders on the best ways to connect the workplace with curriculum topics, such as civil rights or polar exploration, among many others.

There are resources that teachers can download and use to help plan their activities or complement awareness-raising initiatives such as World Book Day or Science Week, Charlotte points out.

Finally, it is possible to access bespoke support to get the most out of the platform and plan sessions, including live or on-demand interactive training for teachers on best practice ideas.

“We all know head teachers have many different competing priorities to deal with every day. And we want to show that this sort of activity is not difficult to put in place; it is all set up, and we are here to help. We can give you lots of ideas on what you could do and show you what other schools have done to get you started,” Charlotte adds.

“It is genuinely minimum effort and zero cost,” agrees John, who argues that the only ‘cost’ to a school is that you or your staff will, of course, need to give a bit of time to set things up for a physical event and then attend the actual event itself.

“There is a bit of time required; there is no doubt about that. However, Primary Futures runs online sessions explaining what it will all involve; there is also a lot of really good online content that you can tap into. It is free and has a high impact – all for a very small amount of effort,” John says.

One further important point to emphasise is that while the talks are notionally about work and often specific careers, Primary Futures is not about giving primary school-age children ‘careers talks’ such as you might get in secondary education, says Charlotte.

“It is simply about broadening horizons; it is about helping their children to see the value of what they’re learning and how that is important beyond the immediate school environment,” Charlotte says.

However, as John points out, engaging with Primary Futures can feed through to embedding important connections into children’s wider learning.

“Young people can’t be what they can’t see. So, this has enabled me to consider the additional ways – with Primary Futures as the beating heart of what we do – I can draw on career-related learning in my school. It has been a vehicle to help me promote career learning, and the impact of that has been enormous. Children who have now moved up to secondary school still remember and talk about these events,” he explains.

“It is not a set, prescriptive model. You can make it work around the time you have and focus it on areas of priority for your school,” agrees Charlotte in conclusion.

Simply sign up at www.primaryfutures.org, and you’ll then receive an invite to book a call with a team member.

Teachers can also sign up for regular webinars as a quick, easy way to learn more about using Primary Futures, with a live demonstration and the chance to ask questions. 

Beyond this, as highlighted above, schools can use a self-service platform to invite volunteers to speak with children virtually or in person.

A wide range of pre-recorded video sessions, downloadable resources, bespoke support and interactive training can also complement this.

Career-related learning in England remains non-statutory at primary age. However, research by Education and Employers has highlighted the value of schools interacting with the world of work at primary age.

Its study, Starting Early, found children as young as five often have ingrained stereotypical views about the jobs people do, based on their gender, ethnicity and social background.

Moreover, most children’s career aspirations are based on family, friends and the media, with less than 1% knowing about a job from someone visiting their school. These aspirations can be surprisingly persistent over time and often remain unchanged at age 17 or 18 from primary age.

The report concluded that career-related learning enriched with employer activities brings many benefits for primary children. These include the following:

However, it is important that activities in primary schools look different from the career education familiar in secondary schools, the research argued. In primary, the emphasis needs to be on diversity, exploration and making learning fun. Activities need to excite children about the subjects they are learning and show them their relevance to their futures.

Schools can introduce more diverse experiences to more children, especially those with fewer chance encounters in their day-to-day life, the report recommended, and frame those experiences in positive, constructive ways.