Jo Richardson Community School started in 2002 with just one year group. We now have a purpose built building and have expanded to 10 form entry. Our sixth form is large with 177 young people, so it has been a key focus for us when working with our alumni.

We are based in a deprived area with a high percentage of students on free school meals and a high percentage of students with parents who have never been to university. Our main priorities for working with former students are providing relatable role models and raising the aspirations of our students. The only graduates lots of them have ever encountered are the teachers at school and doctors. It is essential for them to meet more people who have had different career paths and journeys into higher education to see that there are options available to them in the future.

We decided to work with Future First because at the time, our sixth form was very new and saw the value in being able to stay in touch with our former students and formalise relationships that lots of the teachers in the school already had.

Our Alumni Officer at Future First supported us to start Future Fridays. We run an informal lunchtime meeting where former students talk about what they do and how they got there to inspire and inform our students. What I love about these sessions is that they are specialised and it has helped students with specific interests. The students ask questions and focus on their goals and have been exposed to various ways to get to the same place which has been really helpful for them.

We are very proud to have won the Future First sponsored Pearson’s Teaching Award for School of the Year – Making a Difference. We just had a Sixth Form Open Evening and some of the students who came from other schools said that one of the reasons they came is because they saw that students here had put us forward for the award, which is really positive. The Award has definitely raised our profile in the community and we’ve had lots of good wishes from lots of different organisations.

On the day of the judging we did a showcase which was a real boost. Different departments showcased their progress and teachers got a chance to see what other areas were doing. We had some ex-students come in, we had the DofE table, The Student Voice table. It so encouraging. The whole process has been very positive and to know that one of our sixth form students was the reason we were nominated is amazing.

Our hopes for the network in the future are big. In 20 years’ time we want to be able to invite back former students who are surgeons, managers and CEOs. Currently our former students are young, the eldest are 27 but they will continue to progress and grow their careers. We want our students to be able to see someone that has travelled around the world for their job. As our network grows, this will have an impact on our current students as they will start to see siblings, friends and people from their community who have gone on and achieved after school and that they can do it to.

Jo Richardson Community School is Pearson Teaching Awards School of the Year – Making a Difference. Find out more about the awards and how to enter your school.

Image kindly provided by Jo Richardson Community School.

Kim, a Year 5 Teacher from Prescot Primary School in Knowsley, discusses working with Future First to raise aspirations and show their pupils the different pathways available to them in the future.

Our school is situated in Knowsley and serves a diverse range of children. Our motto is “putting the learner first” and we consider this in everything we do with our children. That’s why we took up the offer from Future First to work with them as part of their pilot in primary schools. We wanted to broaden our children’s horizons by taking a proactive approach to showing them the numerous pathways available in the future.

Lots of our children have quite a narrow awareness of the world of work or things they might like to do after school. We knew that giving them the opportunity to meet former pupils of our school and volunteers who work locally would not only help in raising their aspirations but also with informing them about their future possibilities.

The different workshops our Year 5 children took part in allowed them to speak with a variety of volunteers including a pilot, an editor, an undergraduate student, members of the local council and police officers. I loved watching the children get excited about the future. They really enjoyed thinking about and discussing all the different jobs that they could do when they’re older. They asked such insightful questions of the volunteers and listened so carefully to all the advice they were given.

These workshops covered a real range of topics from future skills to stereotypes and closed with the children collaborating to create their own community campaigns. The children were always encouraged to think about the skills they use and to really consider the interests of different people living locally and the impact that they can have on people’s lives. The confidence in my class now when speaking to new people or presenting has definitely increased. The children have also been able to see a direct link between the skills they’re using or being taught in school and the skills they might need in the future. They now want to do well in class to make sure they can get any job they want!

Some of our children do not have many role models within their household to really inspire them about the world of work. Talking to a range of volunteers has allowed them to find out about different pathways they had not heard of before and given them new experiences to aspire to. Meeting these role models early on in their lives has meant that their awareness of the world of work and the community around them is both challenged and broadened before they need to make any decisions.

To find out more about our primary programme, contact info@futurefirst.org.uk or 020 7239 8933.

Mrs Murphy, Deputy Headteacher at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School in Kirkby, discusses working with Future First to broaden horizons and the impact that relatable role models have had on their pupils.

Our school is a large Catholic Primary School situated in Kirkby, Knowsley. We started working with Future First because we were still in touch with a lot of former students and wanted to make better use of these connections.

Our school has a real family centred ethos. Lots of our parents are former pupils themselves and the community is very supportive. We thought we’d have a good chance of people being willing to come back into school to raise the aspirations of our children and broaden their horizons.

The workshops the children took part in, raised their self-esteem massively and widened their ideas of what they could do in the future. The fact that the volunteers were from the local community or former pupils themselves was amazing. The children understood them fully and the volunteers were such good role models to them. They were on the children’s wavelength, knew how to engage and interact with them but most of all they made sure they embodied our school ethos. They had a personal impact on every child and showed them that they could do anything they wanted to if they worked hard to achieve their dreams. I really liked that the workshops reached out to everyone in terms of the activities on offer which stretched and challenged the children’s thinking skills as well as their personal and social skills.

I remember one of the children telling me how the workshops had really helped him to become a better team member. At the start, his group didn’t work well together and were arguing but by the end they were much better at collaborating. The volunteers helped them with this. They enabled the children to work collaboratively, often identifying specific roles when working as a team. I think the big thing for me is that the self-esteem of our children really did improve; impacting on their confidence to deliver presentations that they had created.

One of the volunteers during these workshops was Brad, a former pupil and currently a parent of our school. He was fantastic and the children really engaged with him.

We had a graduation ceremony coming up for our Year 3 – 6 children and we wouldn’t usually have a speaker but we’d heard how well it worked from another Future First primary school and thought it would be an inspiring thing for our school community too.

We invited Brad to speak to 70 of our pupils and 140 of their parents. He spoke from the heart about his own journey through school and how the children could be anything they wanted to be in the future if they made the most out of every opportunity and didn’t let things knock them down. His whole speech really was from his heart and the children could feel this. Everybody enjoyed listening to someone from our local area who had attended this school and had achieved success. It made the children feel like they could do the same.

I’ll never forget when he said, “It is not how much money you earn or how successful you are; it is being kind to others that is important.” He was really able to embody our school motto: love, care and respect.

I think Brad was also inspired by this journey with us: from being the person who attended each Future First workshop to a speaker at our graduation ceremony before becoming a school governor.

To find out more about our primary programme, contact info@futurefirst.org.uk or 020 7239 8933.