Partnering with Schools: A New Era of Career Support
Schools and colleges face a significant structural challenge in delivering careers education. The labour market changes faster than the curriculum. The gap between what a Year 11 pupil is told about local job opportunities and what the actual market looks like when they leave education two to seven years later can be substantial. And the resources available to most school careers advisers — one adviser, hundreds of students, limited data — make truly personalised guidance difficult to deliver at scale.
Pilot 2 Work's school partnership model is designed to address this structural gap.
What we offer school and college partners
Our school and college partnerships operate on three levels.
Anonymised labour market intelligence. We provide partner institutions with aggregated, anonymised data on the types of roles and sectors their current and former students are moving into — and, crucially, those they are not. This helps careers leads identify gaps between what students aspire to and what routes are genuinely available locally, and plan interventions accordingly.
Direct student referrals. For students identified as being at risk of becoming NEET — particularly in Year 10, 11, and post-16 — schools and colleges can refer directly to our coaching programmes. We provide a named contact, a clear referral pathway, and regular updates on referred students' progress (subject to consent).
Staff development. We work with careers leads and PSHE coordinators to build staff confidence in discussing AI-era employment, neurodiversity in the workplace, and fair-chance employment for young people who have had contact with the justice system. These are topics that many teachers and advisers want to address but feel under-equipped to handle.
What we ask of partners
Our partnerships work because they are genuinely mutual. We ask school and college partners to commit to a named careers lead as our primary contact, to provide us with anonymised data on student destinations where available, and to give us access to relevant student groups at appropriate points in the academic year.
We do not ask for money. Our school partnerships are funded through our employer-side commercial relationships, our grant funding, and our CIC structure — which requires us to reinvest all surpluses into community benefit.
Current reach and next steps
We are currently working with secondary schools and sixth form colleges across the Medway and Swale areas. We are actively looking to extend this into Maidstone, Gravesham, and the Thanet corridor over the next academic year.
If you are a careers lead, a SENCO, a head of sixth form, or a pastoral leader at a school or college in Kent or Medway and you would like to explore a partnership, we would welcome a conversation. Contact us here and we will arrange a call at a time that suits you.