At the beginning of March schools across Cumbria Education Trust were celebrating National Careers Week. The focus for this annual week was careers of the future and the importance of transferable skills.

It is estimated that 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job roles that don’t yet exist.

We shared with students the careers of staff members and more importantly the skills they learned from doing these jobs that have led them to their current position, highlighting their transferable skills and have encouraging students to ask their family members about their own career journeys. There were lots of home learning activities taking place, ranging from writing CVs for favourite book characters to guessing games where students needed to guess the member of staff from clue about their previous jobs.

At Yewdale Primary School, they learnt that someone in the school used to be a ‘Luxury Motor Yacht Stewardess’  and at William Howard School the students learned that the Headteacher used to be a “Walking Guide”.  Many staff have worked abroad including one teacher who made Sauerkraut in Germany and a one who was a Baker in New York and another a Tennis Coach in India.

Schools linked NCW21 to World Book Day looking at the work of authors as well as all the other jobs linked to creating a book such as, editing and publishing. Children themselves became authors and illustrators. They designed front pages for books as well as thinking of plots for their own stories. At Yewdale Primary School each class is named after a famous author and classes Potter, Dahl and Blyton watched a video of an author who explained a hobby can lead to a career. He explaining how his love of drawing inspired him to become an author. Whilst in character, we thought about what job we would be doing if we really were that person! Belle was an inventor, Mario was a plumber and Mary Poppins was a childminder.

The pupils from Tebay Primary School thought about who were key workers throughout the pandemic and made a story book cover for them based on the Happy families series by Allan Ahlberg. Yanwath Primary School pupils were tasked with telling their teachers what their dream job is.  They could present this in any way, they recieved video clips, job applications and pieces of art.

We have also accessed a range of speakers from local industry to share their own career journeys including Andrew Gordon from the Cumberland Building Society https://vimeo.com/434752847. The Cumberland Building Society have worked closely with CET over a number of years and each year they support our My Money Week competition in June setting up the winners accounts in their branches.