We hope you all have enjoyed your summer break. To start the new academic year, we wanted to highlight the amazing hard work and some of the achievements from the previous year.  We are looking forward to working with you again (for some of you this will be for the first time) and supporting you with your careers provision!

Gatsby Benchmark Performance

Tees Valley Careers Hub on average are achieving 7 benchmarks compared to 6 nationally and have successfully met targets for benchmarks 5 & 6.

Careers Impact System - ILR & P2P

We have seen an increase in schools completing an internal leadership review (ILR) with a total of 21.

The Careers Hub had its first Peer to Peer session in the summer term with Laurence Jackson, Dyke House and Rise Carr. A big thank you to the career leaders involved in this process, a great way for the Hub to be able to evidence quality and continuous improvement across institutions and share best practice.

This will continue to be a priority for the new academic year.

WEX diagnostics

The Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC) set every Hub a target of 50% of schools and colleges to complete the Education Insights Questionnaire with a focus around work experience.  Tees Valley Careers Hub achieved 94%, a big thank you to all of you.  These responses have been able to provide us a with a real insight into the picture in the region and how we can prepare for the changes coming.

Future Skills Questionare

Future Skills Questionnaire (FSQ) is fantastic way to measure the career readiness of students at points of transition across secondary education.  FSQ is a feature within the Compass+ careers management tool. This includes the functionality to select students and send out questionnaires, this generates real information for schools in and around helping them to plan future careers strategy we are asking schools to not only utilise this free resource but to also share their experience.

Feedback from Longfield school includes. “We completed the FSQ with Y7 93%, Y9 86%, Y11 71%” - “We used the results to inform our planning and to make small changes to our careers programme e.g. reinforcing some of the different post 16 options in Y8 and Y10 and including more information on trustworthy websites” “Further developments: Look at the occupational areas that pupils are interested in and build contacts with employers from these areas into the careers programme”

Shout Out Portal

Please continue to use our Shout Out Portal as an additional tool to advertise your events and activities, also keep an eye on employer offers for your students.

We currently have over 350 employers registered from a range of sectors and we are continuously working to improve employer engagement on the platform.

This year there were 122 school Shout Outs and 47 Employer offers uploaded to the portal.

The Big Big Project

The Big Big Project, (BBP) is now in it’s 6th Year, is a team challenge posed by Jacobs & Amentum; This year’s topic – Making the Tees Valley one of the UK’s first Hydrogen Super Places.

This year we have had 14 Schools, 98 students. Each school and team is supported by both a school mentor and a Business Mentor this year we have x21 business mentors across 14 businesses, offering their expertise in both project and presentational skills.

Well done to all the schools that have taken part and big thank you to all the mentors and employers supporting the programme and Congratulations to this year's winner Egglescliffe School and the 2 runners up teams Polam Hall & The English Martyrs Catholic School.

SEND Enterprise Challenge Week

This year's SEND Enterprise Challenge Week saw 603 students from 10 schools and 53 classes (Years 7-14) compete in the most technical challenge to date. Thanks to Altrad for sponsoring and providing 45 mentors, judges, and support staff.

The task: Design and build a structure that can hold a 1kg weight and travel 1.5 meters. All teams smashed the goal, impressing us with their confidence in presenting. Students also completed a mini challenge with their mentors to spark creativity.

A 'Strapline and Logo' competition was held, won by Abbey Hill’s 'Rock N Rollers' with the tagline "History can teach the engineers of the future." Caswell Group rewarded the winners with a trip, T-shirt printing, and careers talk.

The teamwork, resilience, and confidence students demonstrated were inspiring. Their support for each other and willingness to persevere showcased valuable character-building skills.

Congratulations to all, and we look forward to next year's challenge!

Anything is Possible

This year’s PRU Anything IS Possible week involved our 5 PRUs from across Tees Valley and Mo Mowlam Academy (SEMH), participating in a program ran by TVCA. Activities included workplace visits, a careers session with Simon Carson, a multi-discipline taster at Learning Curve Construction Academy, an MPCT Army Training Day, and provided bespoke enterprise resources from Talentino.

Feedback was excellent, with MPCT praising students' positive attitude, engagement, and core values. Simon Carson noted a major success with a student who overcame resistance and confidently vocalised his opinions with the group. Archway reported a fantastic experience at AV Dawson, learning about the workplace.

Some activities will continue into September/October 2025. The success so far encourages us to replicate the program next year.

Educate the Educators: Stay Local, Go Far

A CEC-funded Teacher Encounter initiative in Tees Valley connected 55 teachers from all local authorities and subject areas with eight priority growth sectors: Aerospace; Automotive; Clean Energy; Construction; Creative; Digital; Engineering; and Health & Life Sciences.

Key activities:

• Pre-visit briefing: Teachers met employers, set visit objectives, and identified curriculum links.
• On-site encounters: Industry talks, hands-on workshops, career-pathway insights, and facility tours.
• Post-visit resources: Teachers developed lesson plans tying sector insights to specific curriculum topics. All resources are freely accessible here.
• July CPD workshop: Overview of the national and Tees Valley programmes, plus employer reflections – you can view the CPD recording here.

Apprenticeship Events

This year we held two Apprenticeship & Technical Pathways Events for young people and their parents & carers. In February we held our first event at Teesside International Airport showcasing the key sectors of Advanced Manufacturing, Engineering, Automotive, Aerospace, Chemical & Process, Energy & Low Carbon, Offshore and Construction. In June we held our second event at Kirkleatham Walled Garden in Redcar. focussing on the key priority sectors of digital, creative, healthcare, life sciences and professional business services.

The aim of the events was to raise awareness of apprenticeship opportunities in Tees Valley and we were pleased to host talks from ASK Apprenticeships and Teesworks as well as offering 1-1 careers advice from the National Careers Service.

Over 70 employers and providers attended the events and we welcomed over 400 young people and their parents & carers.

Talent Foundry

We were pleased to fund sessions with The Talent Foundry for three schools this year.  “Powering Teesside” is designed for Year 7 and 8 students and focuses on developing confidence, employability skills, and preparing young people for their future careers. Students strengthen essential employability skills such as teamwork, leadership, and communication, there was a digital theme with business mentors from DWP, Ambasat, Virgin Media and Tanglewood Games supporting the workshops.

 "Firstly, a huge thank you to yourselves and the volunteers for todays session. Our pupils loved the day and I feel they definitely got a lot from attending to take with them in the future."  (Haughton Academy)

LMI

All our latest LMI factsheets and data can be found here.

We will shortly be providing every school and college with a printed pack of resources as well as some new digital LMI resources, we are also currently updating our LMI presentation – more info to follow!

Priorities for Next Year

CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT - Revised Gatsby Benchmarks, Senior Leadership engagement, Career Leader CPD, Careers Impact System ILR & P2P, Teacher encounters.

MODERN WORK EXPERIENCE – Preparing for the government ambition and using the Equalex framework.

BOOSTING APPRENTICESHIPS AND TECHINICAL PATHWAYS

A calendar of events/activities will be shared in the next newsletter.