Education Works delivers another year of activity

It is hard to believe that we are now completing another academic year, with our team delivering over 300 activities across 25 schools and 4 universities, equating to over 18000 volunteer hours.

There have been some changes at ELBA in the last year, with the retirement of Liam Kane as CEO and appointment of Ian Parkes, who joined us in April with a keen interest and knowledge of education, being a governor for a number of schools in Greenwich and Tooting  for over 20 years.

The Education Works team welcomed Kerry Mulhern, Karolina Szostak and Reg Amoah, who really hit the ground running in the schools team to ensure that we met the needs of our schools strategies.   Together they delivered some great activities for schools which included the opportunity for schools to work together on events, The Thames Water Challenge, Goals and Aspirations at the FCA and Zurich Financial Challenge.  We are looking forward to developing these and other events further next year.

Our Higher Education offer went beyond the insight clubs, mock interviews and CV surgery when we ran our first mock assessment centre at 1 Canada Square, allowing graduate applicants to experience and get feedback on the recruitment process.  We were excited by the response to the LinkedIn training we ran for students at LinkedIn London, with over 120 applications for 40 places.

Mentoring Works continued to grow in Islington and Camden, beyond the well  established and respected Hackney programme.  The team have established a new way of connecting to mentors with monthly updates and have revamped their resources.  Mentoring Works is 20 years old this year and we are on the search for programme alumni, both mentors and mentees to help us celebrate in October.

Dr Anthony Mann, Director of Research and Policy at the Education and Employers Taskforce in his paper “It’s who you meet: why employer contacts at school make a difference to the employment prospects of young adults” (February 2012) new British evidence shows that statistically, significant positive relationships exist between the number of employer contacts (such as careers talks or work experience) that a young person experiences in school and:

·       Their confidence (at 19-24) in progression towards ultimate career goals;

·       The likelihood of whether (at 19-24) they are NEET or non-NEET

·       Comparative earnings if salaried

We maybe a small team, but we are committed to playing our part in ensuring our young people are able to really benefit from the contacts we can provide with our corporate members.

Thank you to all those who have worked with us this year, know you are making a big difference and here is just one of the many positive quotes we have received that show you that is the case.

Please contact Jo Emmerson if you want to find out how to get involved: Jo.emmerson@elba-1.org.uk.