Employer Engagement for Schools in 2021 – How can we support?

Written by Kerry Peters-Taylor, Programme Manager, Education Works

On 11th February, the Education Works team at ELBA held an event for schools and colleges; ‘Employer Engagement for 2021’, focused on discussing how best to support our education partners, their students and the staff over the coming weeks and months of Spring and Summer term.

Six education partners shared insights into the challenges they are facing, as well as those they anticipate as the uncertainty of school closures continues, as well as successes they have had. Together, we have supported over 2000 students to engage with and learn from our employee volunteers since lockdown first started, an achievement for all to be proud of. One of the careers leaders was complimentary of our work and shared that ‘ELBA provided great activities’.

However, with some schools finding it increasingly difficult to organise and engage students in these events as closure continues, we were keen to understand what other avenues of support we and our corporate partners could offer.

Valuable insights and ideas included looking at how we can support students that have missed out on work experience and creating workshops and webinars more focused on mental wellbeing and motivation, as well as ways we can support teachers and school staff with key professional development needs.

The Education Works team will be taking these insights, plus the many more, and working to shape these into opportunities for employee volunteers to support. We were thrilled with the positive engagement and reactions from our education partners and are excited to continue offering impactful and targeted support to them.

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