Working with RELX Group to improve employment skills
News article from January 15, 2016
Parents being engaged with children’s education is a massive factor in how well they do at school. At School-Home Support (SHS), we address this in a number of ways, supporting parents to become more engaged with their child’s learning, even if their own experience of education was not great.
SHS practitioners often facilitate coffee mornings for parents, a great way for parents to engage with the school and their child’s learning. Coffee mornings can cover many topics – from bedtime routines to helping with homework. Parents can also suggest what topics would be most useful for them. One topic comes up again and again – employment skills.
Fortunately Suzanne and Zen, two volunteers from RELX Group, were on hand to help last December. They came to John Stainer Primary School to help parents with finding and gaining employment.
Tracy, the SHS practitioner based at John Stainer Primary, did a great job publicising the workshop. She stood outside, smiling in the rain, with a huge sign and spoke to parents as they dropped their children off. This attracted lots of attention and very soon a group of enthused parents made their way to the room for the workshop.
The session was very well prepared and the parents each had the chance to talk about their personal experiences. The session covered a range of topics – from job hunting to CV writing. It became apparent that many of the parents felt insecure about their skills, many having been out of work for some time. They worried that gaps on their CVs would make them unemployable. The volunteers reassured them that they all do have important and useful skills. By the end of the session all of the parents felt much more confident about ‘selling themselves’ and making their CVs stand out.
Tracy has got fantastic feedback from the parents who took part. They described the session as ‘brilliant’, ‘extremely helpful’ and ‘easy to understand’. Some have already been talking to other parents in the playground, telling them how great the session was and sharing tips.
Since the workshop, one of the parents has used the advice to gain full-time employment and several others have interviews lined up.
Suzanne and Zen said:
“I really enjoyed preparing and presenting the employment skills workshop with SHS. It was something a bit different from my day job and the parents were so engaged and appreciative”.
“It was great that even the short time we spent seemed to give all the parents more confidence”.
Thank you so much to Suzanne, Zen and all those at RELX Group for their continued support. The resources from the workshop will be made available through SHS Membership, enabling practitioners across the country to adapt them and run their own employment skills workshops.