Making Work Experiences Count

During the year I have completed 3 teacher placements and Leicester Education Business Consortium, LEBC, who have organised these for me say they will confirm my fourth placement in the next couple of weeks.  I also made 10 visits to students undertaking work experience.  During both types of visit I was able to observe people at work and discuss with them what Maths skills they thought they were using and make suggestions.  In all the placements I was able to ask about the sort of tasks which would be given to work experience students and, during the student visits, I talked to them as well.  I was also able to take photographs during most visits.

The Teacher Placements were to:

• Tanvic tyres where I spent most of the time watching car mechanics;
• British Heart Foundation Shop where I observed the complete cycle from goods being donated to being prepared and displayed for sale in the shop;
• Bankfield Financial services where I talked to a variety of staff both about ordinary work experiences and also potential projects.

I visited 5 AS level students who had arranged their own work experiences.  They were working as clerical assistants at KPMG and KP consultancy, an accounts assistant at George Wimpey, an admin assistant at the Leicester African Caribbean Business Ass. and both at Invicta Plastics.

I also visited 6 students undertaking placements as part of their Health and Social BTEC National.  Three of them were working in primary schools, one in a pre-school setting and the other two were working in a community centre and in a care home. 

In the conversations with staff and students, unless there were calculations involved in the work, many saw “no mathematics” initially.  However, when I pointed out the Maths I saw them using, nearly all of them agreed with me. In fact I saw very little direct mathematics involving number – the most mathematical was probably a game of beetle in the community centre!

I was appointed to a new job in July last year and, while I have been able to get away for visits and training, I have not been able to get any extra days to devote to the project.  However my new job does mean that I now have access to schools in Nottinghamshire as well as Leicestershire and together with the possibility of influencing a Functional Mathematics exam I am in a position to make a difference.
I have collected my data and I have started producing my resources.  I have identified that these need to be of three sorts

• for students to help them prepare for and to see the maths they can use/need to work for them
• for teachers so that they can draw on the students’ own experiences to make sure that maths is part of the WRL and most importantly
• for the work experience provider.

The resources for the employers need to be of two sorts, one to replace existing documentation and the other for the mentors.  Currently employers are asked “what opportunities are there for the student to use their keyskills” but not given any guidance.  I will produce sector related documents which start with likely opportunities within their sector for using Mathematics and asks the employers to identify which of those they can provide and what other opportunities there are.  The mentor, who has day to day responsibility for the young person, needs a different set of resources. Very often this person has not seen any of the other correspondence and perceives Maths as being “doing something with numbers or using a calculator”.  They do not want extra work to do and they are most interested in keeping the young person as gainfully employed as possible for as little disruption as necessary to themselves.  In a good placement the employee will have a lighter work load and flexibility but often they are supervising the student alongside their ordinary duties.  This is where I am hoping to produce some “win win” resources which enhance the value of the WRL to the young person and reduce the load on the employee.

A very simple illustration of how this can be achieved is in how the students are given tasks.   Even the college students on level 3 courses were simply given one task at a time and asked to report back “if they had any problems or when they had finished”.  Almost invariably when I asked if the student could have been given more than one task and asked to decide for themselves which order to do them in, the answer was yes.  Students are also often given repetitive tasks, here they could be asked to spend 15mins on the task and then report back to say if they had any problems and to give an estimate for when they thought they would be finished.

For more capable students the task of filing can also be turned into a more productive exercise by asking them to look at the current system of filing and then to reflect on possible problems/improvements.

I now need to work hard to produce resources which are attractive and easy to use as soon as possible.  Some of the ideas I have come up with so far can be found in the other documents I am sending:

Working through the LEBC has been slow but they have said they will be interested in seeing the resources that I produce and through them I can reach many more schools and employers than I could hope to on my own.  To further disseminate my material I will be running a session at both the ATM and NANAMIC conferences next year and I have asked the MA if I can present at their conference.

I have much still to do but I could not have got to where I am without the support and encouragement I have had through being a Gatsby Fellow.  Thank you.