(Above image: Year 9 Enterprise workshop with @SageEducation)

Hardeep Phull is Careers Lead / Teacher of Maths & Computer Science at Eden Girls’ School, Waltham Forest. Hardeep tells us about the challenges of inspiring young female students to continue into STEM careers and subjects and exposing pupils to companies outside of Waltham Forest, and of how the school tackles these. 

What are the challenges that your students and colleagues face?
The key challenges we face include inspiring our young females to continue into STEM careers and subjects; exposing our pupils to companies outside of Waltham Forest; and building confidence in our pupils to present and communicate, and develop life skills outside of the classrooms.

How does your institution help students and colleagues overcome these challenges?

1. We have gone on many of ELBA’s Career Insight Visits (CIV) to various companies within Canary Wharf and London, where pupils had to present their ideas/ projects to senior leaders within companies;
2. Through ELBA, we have been involved with challenges/competitions with Pinsent Masons (debating challenge) and London City Airport (STEM in Aviation Event);
3. ELBA has enabled us to participate in a range of activities with different companies and industries, including M3 Consulting, T.Rowe Price, HSBC, Credit Suisse, KPMG, to name a few.
4. T.Rowe Price and their financial literacy session with ELBA has been a very useful workshop and has been embedded in the Maths curriculum, helping us bring maths to life.

Do you have an inspirational story/moment about your work that you would like to share?P
upils have found Mock Interviews very useful and have learnt a lot on how to present and answer questions. They felt confident in handling interviews and what to expect. Pupils who participated in the Pinsent Masons debate feel motivated to help the next group who will compete. Many of our pupils feel inspired to work in buildings and companies that we have visited. And many pupils feel inspired and can see the curriculum come to life especially with T. Rowe Price’s Money Confident Kids workshops, hour of code sessions, and various CIVs.

What kind of support are you in need of right now and how might volunteering fit into that?
Maybe volunteers to support us as our Duke of Edinburgh scheme. Also, pupils value the volunteers that come into school and when they meet them externally. They appreciate hearing their journey.