North East Ambition Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot

Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot 

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) teamed up with the EY Foundation to deliver the Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot.

Evidence tells us that high quality careers education, information, advice and guidance can help young people reach their potential and make a successful transition from school to further study and employment.

Evidence also tells us that children begin to form ideas about their futures when they’re as young as five or six. By the age of 10, many young people have already made career limiting decisions, which are fixed by the time they’re 14.

The Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot is a 2 year project that build on the success of the transformational Good Career Guidance Benchmark Pilot (2015-17) that led to the Benchmarks forming a central part of DfE’s 2017 Career’s Strategy

Find out more about the Primary Pilot

The Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot is a key part of the LEP's Strategic Economic Plan. It forms part of North East Ambition, which supports young people in the region to make informed career choices.

The Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot builds on the success of the North East LEP’s Good Career Guidance Benchmark Pilot, which was delivered in partnership with the Gatsby Foundation and 70 secondary schools and colleges from across the region.

Transformational and championed by government, the benchmarks are today part of statutory guidance for schools and colleges and provide a framework for delivering high quality careers education, information and guidance across England.

Evaluating the impact of careers-related learning in North East primary schools

Matt Joyce, Regional Lead: North East Ambition at the North East LEP, has been involved in piloting a new approach to careers-related learning in primary schools for the last two years. He explains what, for him, have been the most important outcomes of the project.

We’ve just finished evaluating the two-year North East Ambition Career Benchmarks: Primary Pilot which involved 70 primary schools in our region.

Schools were supported to embed careers-related learning throughout the curriculum and for children of all ages, from early years through to key stages one and two, using a framework based on the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks, which have already been proven to have positive outcomes in secondary schools and colleges.