Cohesion, UCAS, UTC Reading and Virgin Media discuss School Outreach: How to drive social mobility and increase inclusion.
Thank you to everyone who attended our webinar. We hope you found it useful.
Cohesion held the event to discuss the topic of School Outreach: How to drive social mobility and increase inclusion. We were joined by Becky Hopwood, Head of Sales at UCAS, Amy Sutcliffe, Events Lead at UTC Reading and Natalia Swieca, Future Careers Recruitment Lead at Virgin Media. Each speaker shared their thoughts and tips in terms of engaging with schools and how to attract a more socially mobile, inclusive pool of applicants by targeting 16 – 18 year olds.
You can watch the recording of the event here:
You can also download a copy of the slides here: School outreach event slides (94 downloads)
The session highlighted that employers still have much more to do to promote apprenticeship opportunities to young people considering this route over a degree. It is important to work with schools and colleges to ensure students are aware of the availability of these within your organisation. Schools and colleges appreciate employers who will share resources and allow their students to get to know an organisation by visits over a period of time as opposed to a one off career fair day. Students want to be sure that they will find ‘their tribe’ within an organisation and not miss out on important social benefits by not going to University.
Virgin Media have had great success with their recent school outreach programme and found that timing was essential – February to June being the ideal time. They found keeping all sessions as short and interactive as possible including their webinars, quizzes etc. Virgin Media were finding the minimum of 5 GCSE’s including Maths and English caused a barrier to a lot of their potential applicants and so lowered their requirements as much as possible. They have put analysis and checks in further down to ensure this does not impact the quality of candidates coming through and so far have had excellent results with candidates performing well that did not have these minimum requirements. They believe they are right to trust their recruitment process and remove as many barriers as possible to candidates in order to drive social mobility and inclusion.
UCAS
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service connects people to University, post University studies including teacher training, apprenticeships and internships.
UCAS | At the heart of connecting people to higher education
UCAS – School leavers choices report
UTC Reading
UTC Reading is a college for boys and girls aged 14 to 19 living in the catchment area. The UTC specialises in Engineering and Computer Science, alongside a broad and balanced curriculum and benefits from the support of local and national employers and leading universities.
Virgin Media
Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom.
