In a new segment for our newsletter, we hear from our dedicated team of Careers Advisers. The below was featured in our July 2021 newsletter – where we heard from Tariq Sadiq.
I have spent most of my working life in education and in social causes of various kinds including addressing the problems of socio-economic inequality. I feel that my work at Form the Future neatly synthesises all the things that I care about.
The pressures children face today will shape what they will become tomorrow. Effective careers education and guidance has the potential to break cycles of generational disadvantage and to change whole communities. We can make change by opening the eyes of young people to their own potential and helping them to overcome real or perceived barriers.
Reducing the widening gap between those who have and those who have not benefits everyone, whether rich or poor, because it makes for a more civilised, more trusting society where everyone feels they have a stake in the future. This is essential if we are to tackle the most urgent problems facing the planet like climate change, because we need everyone’s talents, not just of those who happen to get the right advice at the right time from the right people.
Careers education is the bit that connects what children learn in school with what comes after. If pupils know that being able to calculate quadratic equations and understand the causes of the Second World War are skills that are needed in the world of work, they will be motivated to aim higher and to engage better, because careers advice will show that the curriculum has a purpose and is not there just to make their lives difficult.
