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Gatsby Benchmarks and the Big Ideas Programme

August 21, 2023

Gatsby is an organisation committed to strengthening the country’s science and engineering skills. In 2013, Gatsby commissioned Sir John Holman to set out what career guidance in England would be like if it were good by international standards, resulting in the Good Career Guidance report.

The eight Gatsby Benchmarks defined in the report serve as a framework for world-class careers provision and have been adopted as part of the Government’s Careers Strategy, statutory guidance for schools and guidance for colleges.

We are proud that the Big Ideas Programme is directly aligned with 4 of the 8 benchmarks, and works to support schools with 3 more. See how below…

Benchmark 3
Addressing the Needs of Each Pupil

The Big Ideas Programme directly addresses this benchmark as the programme is designed to be accessible to all learning types, targets disadvantaged students, encourages diversity in participants, and ‘actively seeks to challenge stereotypical thinking and raise aspirations’*.

Benchmark 4
Linking Curriculum Learning to Careers

The Big Ideas Programme aims to directly address this by working with teachers across the curriculum – Geography, Science, PSHE, Citizenship, DT, etc. giving students ‘the opportunity to learn how the different STEM subjects help people to gain entry to, and be more effective workers within, a wide range of careers’*. Organising career learning involving employer through extracurricular activities’* is in this benchmark.

Benchmark 5
Encounters with Employers and Employees

The benchmark requires at least ONE meaningful encounter with employers – the Big Ideas Programme provides all participants with the opportunities for a minimum of 4 ‘meaningful encounters’* with employees in the form of our mentors (Big Ideas Day and development sessions).  ‘a young person who has four or more meaningful encounters with an employer is 86% less likely to be unemployed or not in education or training and can earn up to 22% more during their career’*.

 

Benchmark 7
Encounters with further and higher education

‘By the age of 16, every student should have had a meaningful encounter with providers of the full range of educational opportunities, including sixth forms, colleges, universities and apprenticeship providers’*.  The Big Ideas Programme offers this opportunity to the Regional Finalist teams by holding Regional Finals at universities and ensuring that there is either a campus tour (usually) or at least a talk delivered by university staff/student ambassadors introducing university life.

Benchmark 1
A stable careers programme

The Big Ideas Programme can support this as part of the careers programme the school sets up. Schools don’t often have anything set up for Years 7-9, so this can form part of that strategy.

Benchmark 2
Learning from career and labour market information

The Big Ideas Programme doesn’t directly contribute to this, however we do introduce sourced resources on the Big Ideas Day that schools could also access and share with students and parents to support this benchmark.

Benchmark 6
Experiences of workplaces

The Big Ideas Programme doesn’t address this directly, but in its mission to develop relationships between schools and local business through the mentoring side of the programme, it provides the introductions needed for schools to then pursue opportunities of work placement or visits.

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