Primary School students across the Tees Valley are developing their enterprise skills and broadening their careers knowledge by taking part in the MFC Foundation Careers and Enterprise programme.
Between April and July 2021, MFC Foundation’s Careers and Enterprise programme, which is funded by the Tees Valley Combined Authority as part of the Primary Careers Pilot, helped to deliver over 90 hours of face-to-face delivery across the following schools: Bewley Primary School (Stockton-on-Tees), Kirklevington Primary School (Stockton-on-Tees), Thorntree Academy (Middlesbrough) and St Mary’s Church of England Primary School (Stockton-on-Tees).
A total of 197 Key Stage 2 students participated in a wide range of activities over the 10 sessions within their school, some of the topics focused on were removing career-based stereotypes, learning about different jobs within local workplaces and students designing and promoting their own MFC branded product.
Comments from teachers within these schools included:
‘It has been great to see the children think about what they will do when they leave school and be given the opportunity to explore this more.’
‘It’s nice that children have had the chance to think of future jobs / prospects / aspirations at such a young age, giving them a wide variety of opportunities.’
‘This programme has developed a variety of the childrens’ skills and given them ‘food for thought’ for the future.’
It was found that all of the enterprise skills and core topics that were being focused on throughout this programme, showed, in general, an improvement in the child’s perceived awareness and understanding of the topic and its content. With the specific enterprise skill showing the greatest levels of development amongst students being their ‘Communication’.
The programme has not stopped there though, with the programme currently being delivered to a further 259 students in another 6 primary schools within the Tees Valley region: Oakdene Primary School (Stockton-on-Tees), Discovery Special Academy (Middlesbrough), St John the Baptist Primary School (Stockton-on-Tees), St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School (Middlesbrough), St Thomas More Primary School (Middlesbrough) and Grangetown Primary School (Redcar and Cleveland).
In addition to the face-to-face programme, MFC Foundation have also been creating online resources for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 students, these are available to all primary schools within the Tees Valley area and can be accessed here. During the period of April – July 2021 the key topic areas for these resources were ‘Employability and Life Skills’ and ‘Money Matters’, with new topics being added regularly and proving invaluable for many schools.
For further information about the MFC Foundation Careers and Enterprise programme, please contact daniel.wiseman@mfcfoundation.co.uk.
