00:00 – Intro
00:34 – Aims
01:18 – My work experience
03:15 – Why are we doing this now?
05:26 – Gatsby Benchmarks
06:05 – Why in year 12?
08:19 – National statistics
10:03 – Pathways to employment
12:08 – What is Thriftwood doing?
15:23 – When are we doing this?
17:30 – What are the top concerns?
21:03 – Beyond Thriftwood
24:52 – Supported internships
26:12 – Work experience logs
27:43 – Thanks for watching!
And so welcome and thank you here 12 thank you for coming down um so politely respectfully this afternoon um the first thing I’ll say to you is this is very very new with r College it’s the first time FR has ever tried anything like this so it’s very scary and very
Challenging very nerve cracking all at the same time all right um so I’m going to talk to you about things that we’ve been doing and our aspirations uh for what’s going to happen um as we move forward okay um so what I’d like to talk about this
Afternoon are the three things there to inform you why I’ve decided to run this program and there’s lots of reasons behind that um that I’ll kind of go over briefly today if I had to go into them in detail I’d be here for hours and going through documents and documents
And things like that um secondly to explain how we’d like to manage the program and what we’ve been doing so far to make this touch would fingers crossed successful first time through um and thirdly um suggest how this program as nerve-wracking and as scary as it might
Seem is going to enable our young people to move on as more rounded better prepared individuals for the world at work okay so I want to take you back to 1990 um my work experience right so I loved school I really did um I was in the airet because
I absolutely with every fiber of my being wanted to become a pilot so I went to the air Cadets and absolutely loved it um and I thought you I’m going to get some work experience at an airport or something like that and guess where I ended
Up I ended up working as a mechanic in a garage 25 minutes walk up the road um and it kind of wasn’t what I planned to do at all um I didn’t know what a car was realistically however um I still remember to this day as I was writing
This PowerPoint Heath Park Motors and I went on the website the other day it’s now closed down and that made me actually sad a little bit because I remember the two weeks that I worked there I worked with a mechanic you know named Phil he was great he was lovely to
Me and adults I’m sure that you’ll appreciate this I was sent to the calf you know to get some powdered water and all that kind of stuff um you’re 12 students powdered water doesn’t exist because you need water but you know as a young naive 13-year-old I was sent off
To get roll and powdered water and I came back and said oh they didn’t have any powdered water um so I you know these memories I have have helped kind of shape a who I’ve become today but help me enjoy the sessions as well as a nervous 13-year-old going out and having
To organize this um myself you know with help from family so the first thing I wanted to kind of Bear in mind is experiences like this they do shape us they do give us those core memories and they’re really really important I think so why are we doing this now okay
Um like I said there’s lots of reasons why we’re doing it now um four of them kind of that I’ve focused on are here um department for Education basically they say every young person by 18 should have had six work experience kind of experiences whether that’s um experiences the workplace or
Whether that’s full work experience rwood college we do do some basic stuff around that but we don’t do it from the experience of the employer we go in as customers and we experience it that way this program hopefully will let our young people see it from the other side
And see what the experience is like from an employer perspective and that I think is really important to becoming kind of a more rounded individual as we head into our future careers um secondly it’s got an asterisk I’ll come to it in a second Gatsby benchmarks there are eight
Gatsby benchmarks that every single School in the land has to kind of say they’ve achieved this this this this the list goes on forever and it’s something that we are really trying to work our way around and navigate around um we want to improve our curriculum offer we are doing so much
Work around Korean and improving our offer in year 11 12 and 13 so that when a young person comes to leave us at the end of year 13 they’ll have had more benefit more experience more understanding of what it is to go into the workplace at the end of the
Presentation I’ve got two additional slides that I was at a course the other day for kind of preparing for adulthood and they just struck me as amazing so I’ve kind of nicked them and I’ve added them to the end so if you wants to see those I’m happy to share them um lastly
Just to improve our young people’s preparedness at the end of thrift word we want them to be able to walk into Chon College culture or potentially a supported internship or an apprenticeship and I think this program in year 12 is one of the better ways for
Them to be able to do that as they move on right then so like I said these are the benchmarks that every school in the land whether they send Provisions mainstream Provisions colleges have to show that they can achieve and working on the Arrow there is where food
College doesn’t really tick all the boxes workplace experiences and this program hopefully with some excellent support from parents and young people within year 12 will help us achieve those aspirations to improve what we can offer at F College okay so why year 12 why not year 13 okay
There’s lots of reasons the four I think that are most important are here in year 12 young people are not really working towards any kind of Assessments whether that being in English math or anything like that so in terms of their learning they won’t miss out that kind of
Structur should work towards assessments that we feel is so important okay now if the young person is going to leave at the end of year 12 and head off to mainstream college or other places they may do assessments but that’s just so we can help them leave with a wider
Portfolio but typically our assessments are done in year 11 and year 13 okay um in year 12 in comparison a lot of mainstreams schools will do their work experience in year 11 either just after their gcss or just kind of around that period of time that’s fine that’s how they work our
Young people obviously we want to give them more experience in terms of chronological age as well as cognitive age and for us we feel that year 12 fits our curriculum best through year 10 and 11 they work a pshc program to help develop them as young people they will
Get you into year 12 and hopefully start looking towards Beyond food college and The Wider World experience and work is a huge Factor within that and lastly from Tomorrow U myself and some colleagues have been working really really hard on another aspect of how this is going to work we’re actually
Going to really start looking at targeted profiling towards aspirations of young people and we’re actually embedding a new IT program into thle college from tomorrow we’ve got the guy coming to do the first day of our training and bedding tomorrow which will help us really direct our young people
Towards specific career paths and help us dedicate kind of what support we can put in based on those choices so this program and that one will hopefully lead us to more directed outcomes at the end of year 13 okay um so this kind of slide is one of
The ones that I’ve nicked from the talk that I was at the other day and actually this is kind of I found it shocking um that this actually um happened um So within essics um and I’m just going to turn around here so you can see that of all
The young people with a disability only 5.3 males 4.1% of males are actually in employment and that quite frankly is it shocking um and we need to help improve what we can do here at thrift word to prepare our young people to go out to the workplace um so 5.2% of our in
Esss um and the next slide um shocks me even more so send leevers across all schools whether that be mainstream send Provisions or anything like that um based on those numbers only 121 are going to go into any form of employment and I can see a lot of head shaking and
A lot of kind of disapproved kind of faces um and that’s just the statistics of the stuff which is why I put that there um and that last fact there just it blew my mind away when the guy presenting to us um Terry said you know that’s that’s a cester United
Game that’s that’s not okay so we are really really trying to work to buuck that Trend at least with RW pupils right then um adults um in the room parents in the room this is kind of how we would have thought that we went into employment U would have gone to
School would have gone to college would have popped off the university because that’s what we did and then we have got a job that’s the traditional model that doesn’t work for everyone and what we’re trying to do um at thriftwood and what we’ve been um improving on
Slowly is it improving kind of how we work what we do and why we do it so the green is currently what thriftwood are working at what Thrift would offer the red up here at the very least is kind of where we’d like to improve okay now most mainstream
Colleges um and different kind of establishments as we move on will offer supported internships and apprenticeships and things like that and I think doing even a simple work experience program here at thrift word will help prepare them for the understanding of what a supported internship is um and the next slide I
Think you’ll see that um the the statistics hold up better with those two options as ideas moving forward um and again based on what you’ve just seen I think that really kind of stands out um so having a kind of a work based approach to learning helps actually improve kind of targeted um
Employment um so us having our work experience program in year 12 hopefully we’ll start getting young people thinking about why work is important and how they can focus their learning towards work the support internships and apprenticeships really take that Focus um and like I said the last two slides I
Can go into that in a little bit more detail um at the end okay so what are we doing I think is my next slide there we are it’s like I’ve prepared this um although if my clicker works it would be even better wouldn’t it right yes
Okay so um we are working with a company called be um and I will tell you the story about this the lady um who is my contacted be believe it or not I used to work with her daughter at previous setting her daughter has situational mutism and in the setting that I worked
Out we really struggled to fit her in and we really struggled to make our curriculum work so when I discovered and it was by pure coincidence that I put The Feelers out to different companies that offer work experience CLA came back to me and said oh Mr buter you know be
As misss here but actually you know me as Hannah’s mom and it blew blew my mind that how things are come back so the company that we’re working with I know have a fully understanding of like broad understanding of what send means what kind of impacts it might have or what
Obstacles it might put in the way um and B have a dedicated send provision team that are working with us to try and work on placement okay so we have been working there um I’ve been asking staff and parents um to fill out little kind of pen profiles of
Our young people if you haven’t done of those yet I can provide some forms but we’ve kind of created those some parents have done them kind of wonderfully um and really filled them out for us and colleagues have been doing those as well so we’re trying to kind of build up a
Really really kind of accurate picture of what aspirations what likes dislikes and things that they have they’ve all gone off to the company who are kind of using those to try and work on what kind of employment types and what jobs and things like that they can discover um
And had an interesting conversation um because be are actually based in Romford which obviously doesn’t kind of come out this way and when i’ had a conversation with them and said look young people come from all over they bust in from lots of different districts around Shel they said would you like us
To start looking in different postcode areas and I said is that possible and they said yes because we’re such a small cohort so I’m hoping and again I touch wood here because it’s the first time we’ve done it they’re actually going to start looking at the different postcode
Areas um so that young people don’t have to travel too far I can’t promise anything there also um I’ve been out and I’ve been into chood I’ve been making phone calls um with different kind of young people in M um and kind of you’ll see I’ve sourced I
Think so far maybe five or six placements myself trying to kind of put the right kind of people in placements and kind of hoping that that kind of leg work goes to help what offer we can do there um but also I think embedding the profiling even from tomorrow will help
Us really kind of identify what strengths and what skills and what kind of aspirations for the future that our year 12 pupils will have so we can use that from tomorrow to start looking at employment types as well so so much work has been going on to get this right as
Right as we can for the first time um so since July um I’ve been having sleepless nights about different aspects of this program um and I’ve been emailing the company weekly about pupils and what we’re learning about the pupils and what they come to us and say this week I’ve just sent three
Updates because what we’ had kind of suggested for young person young person said oh no that’s changed I don’t want to do that anymore I want to do this so I’ve emailed the company and said oh look I don’t want this anymore I want this so we’ve got kind of really good
Kind of communication with the company to help us achieve correct placements um and P a note for your diary’s um parents and even year 12 pupils if you got your phones I’m happy that you put that in here the program will run for 2 weeks so 10 days Monday through Friday for 2
Weeks um from the 5th of February until the 16th so Monday to Friday inclusive of those two weeks now the plan is a working day doesn’t necessarily mean 9 to5 anymore okay so I’ve been speaking to employees and I’ve been saying our College day run from 9:30 till 3:30 so if you’ve got
Something you know that you could help our young people with around that kind of time of day whether it’s 10 till 2 or anything like that most of them have come back said yeah that’s not a problem um I had a conversation with an employer um the other day and they said actually
Um Jules we’re not really busy during the day but what we could offer is 4 late and then that struck a cord with me actually because working life like I said isn’t now 9 to5 but 4 L actually is probably manageable for our young people in that 4H hour slot it might be
Slightly different from a normal day but I think 4 hours keeping them kind of busy and engaged within that setting was okay um so I’ve actually spoken to the manager and they’ve said oh great they’ve already filled out all the paperwork and done all their liability
Insurances for me and I’ve got that kind of placement ready to go so employers are working with us and we’re trying really hard to make sure those Provisions are kind of right for our young people um again this came from the course that I kind of went to and again
It struck me um so I’m going to kind of use it and I’m not going to say that it’s mine um it’s quite insightful um parents would you agree that that sounds about right I’m not sure employers and I know that we fear don’t we when we’re putting
Kind of our children out with different people that they’re not going to get the support that they need and I get that which is why we are doing so much work so soon um to try and get the right kind of placements okay year 12 if you went out to work
What would you worry about W up in I appreciate that actually Harvey said waking up uh sorry as you said I’m employment rate for people who have disabilities such as Auto disorder is so am also very scared of um probably a really inight for Tyler she said to be really scared to actually
Be unemployed because people don’t understand people seeing me differently that’s the one thing I’ve always been very um frightened of to be honest because obviously I I bleed the same color you guys do I’m I’m Still Human yeah sure my you know what I really appreciate that um right about people not
Understanding me that was the kind of the number one feedback and I get that utterly get that um which is why year 12 we’re working so hard um for this to work um schools this was interesting to me not enough time the bag’s under my no I’m
Kidding um yeah so this for us um is is a huge undertaking it really is um the first time we’ve done it try to get it right and try to overcome all the fears and kind of distresses and anxieties that year 12’s have we have as staff
Sending our young people out parents I’m sure you thinking oh my God what are they doing um but I feel that given the nature of employment requirements nowadays this is the right step and a huge step for us to take um and they actually had an employer
There and it was it was this kind of it blew me away the employeers didn’t really understand how to support or work with people yeah that that’s my value about with Thomas and you know what I absolutely get that but I want to flip that on its head the longer we stay away
From employers and keep our young people sheltered in a place like thriftwood which is lovely they’re never going to learn so by us taking these steps with a lovely cohort and putting them out into employees that we’ve sought that a company that understands send have helped us find we can start changing
That can’t we and we can help employers understand what it is to work with somebody who is autistic ADHD hearing impaired you know so um I think we need to do this to begin to help employees as well and if we can be at the Forefront of that with rle
College saying right we’re doing this we’re doing this it can only improve I hope okay um so that that was kind of that struck me I haven’t got long left um and then I’ll kind of open up to any questions I actually feel okay so far cuz I was doing the annual review
Meetings the other week and I must have discovered 30 spelling mistakes I don’t think I’ve made one yet so we’re okay um right so how’s this going to help Improvement in social skills confidence okay by creating what I call good stress okay we all know what bad stress
Feels like I’m sure but creating that good stress of making people nervous but for the right reason is going to help them improve and understand and shape themselves and how to kind of work out those kind of different methods of surviving of working of achieving of prospering in those different
Areas um experience in workplaces like I said you’ve seen this Statistics 25% through a kind of a work-based learning program is better less than 5.2% nationally of just standard employment for young people with additional needs um this is going to help young people and if it doesn’t work
Great because working in a cafe might be like no I don’t want to do that anymore I want to do this or working in a museum yeah I really enjoyed that maybe that’s a potential career choice for me so I’m hoping that the experience of work is
Actually going to help our year 12 think for themselves and learn about who they want to be and where they want to be when they’re working Beyond thriftwood college what college courses they might need to apply for even um and then just simply being a well-rounded individual in the
World right then so what next um firstly I’m going to say this I’ve spoken to um two other schools that run the program and I’m actually going to another one in South End um if Mr Kint lets me go off timetable um to go and speak to the staff there the school in
South End are a send provision they’ve been doing work experience for years and it works so I’m going to go and find out how it works why it works um but I’ve spoken to colleagues on the phone um who run different kind of levels of program
Um and I feel that this is something we should be doing so um parents firstly and even students if you know of a relative or a family member that has a business or a company or somewhere that you go regularly whether it’s t- rooms whether it’s a museum or whatever that you know
Actually they know Joe or they know um Alfie or they know luchano right sorry I was just waking you up um all right or they know Lano you know um if you’ve got those kind of contacts those placements typically will work better because yes the employer will know the young person
A little bit better you probably as a parent feel safer the students may feel safer going somewhere that they know and I get that um now also um like I said earlier we’ve made upwards of 30 phone calls visits um cycling around chel on my bike in the rain going to different
Shops popping my head in say like oh we’ve got students can you do work experience it’s been a huge learning experience for me as well because I think my social skills have improved um my C my phone skills certainly have when somebody turns me down um but there we
Are um I’ve emailed be um for an update of what placements they’ve already discovered for us they’ve actually been working for us since September July even when we first made communication with them um so I’m hoping that they’re kind of doing the business for us there so
I’m going to get back on to them and like I said I’d like to go and visit this other school that’s been doing a work experience program for a number of years safely um and I think no oh crumbs right these are the two slides um really um I guess for year
12 students we talked about different Pathways of learning right um and many of you will be thinking in your head simply I want to go a brain tree I want to go a cach I want to go a CHS with to do level one and level two courses now a
Number of the the different courses that I have been on um with colleagues very very recently have talked about these different Pathways um the one that essics Authority right now are really working and pushing um is this kind of supported internship program and in fact many of the colleges that our young
People typically will go to cheler brain treat cester or run these programs and they don’t really kind of get enough coverage I feel because if the employment rate by doing a course like this is going to improve that much then I think this really has to be a a valid
Thought process um so I just kind of wanted to share that with you it does include work as a central kind of theme of the program and to bring it back to Thrift word if it’s success uccessful there I think that work here should be equally successful for us in helping us shape
The Ambitions of our young people as well right I’ve got a couple of things that I I would like to just show um we have already tried this um one of our young people has been out to work already um so I just if I’m perfectly honest it’s
Just amazing I’m not going to name the person and go into it any more than this but my plan this when every young person will go out to work they’re going to get this is the booklet the company provides which actually is lovely and neat and
It’s nice and Society um I’ve done my own one as well um so every young person will actually kind of um work on a log of their experiences and I think that’s a kind of a huge hugely important reflective process as well so whether we go with the one that the company
Provides for the one that I’ve kind of made from all the research that I’ve done but there will be expectation that at the end of the day day a young person will come home and write what they’ve done during the day even if it’s a sentence or two um prev visits to all
The things uh all the placements the things all the placements will certainly aim for um I’ve been like I said to nearly every shop in Chels of right now but the wider ones that we don’t know so much about probably myself will get there and go and have a look um but we
Had a health and safety um supervisor actually come here to meet me the other day to run through what they’re doing so when they go to Every St they’ll ask about police checks they’ll look at health and safety records um you know if a placement potentially is in a calf or
A kitchen they’ll kind of understand all the kind of the need for safety around the ovens and the cutlery and things like that so all that is going on as well um I think I probably Bamboozled and filled brains full of loads of information well um year 12 can I say
Thank you very much you’re sitting respectfully and listening so well parents thank you for coming this afternoon um and we hope see you soon parents and year 12 time to go and get your buses