Less than half of all GCSE pupils do work experience

Worryingly few pupils do any work experience before they sit their GCSEs, a major new report has found.

Most secondary schools in England allocate time for pupils to go on a work experience placement in Year 10, at the age of 14 or 15, rather than in Year 11, the last year of GCSEs.

However, an analysis of almost 147,000 Year 10 pupils reveals that fewer than half actually do work experience and the proportion is even lower for pupils on free school meals and those in the north of England.

The findings, by The Key Group, are in stark contrast to the Government’s manifesto pledge to “guarantee two weeks’ worth of work experience for every young person”.

The Key Group’s report found that on average only 49% of Year 10 pupils go on any work experience at all and, for those who do, the average time spent on it is just under five days. Under 2% of Year 10 pupils currently go on work experience placements for two weeks.

The data, which covers more than a fifth of all state secondaries in England, shows deep inequalities within our school system. Some 42% of pupils on free school meals go on work experience, significantly less than the 51.5% who go on work experience who don’t receive free school meals.

The report also shows a stark north-south divide. In all regions in the north of England, the proportion of pupils who go on work experience is lower than in the south of the country. For example, just 33.5% of pupils in Yorkshire and the Humber go on work experience, compared to 59% of pupils in south-west England.

Several schools told The Key Group that the cost of running placements was high given their constrained budgets, both in the time it took staff to organise it, and the costs they had to pay out. One school said they had to pay £20 per pupil for a health and safety check, while another currently outsources their work experience scheme at a cost of £75 per pupil, which they said was financially unsustainable.

Other schools said running a work experience programme had become more difficult after the pandemic as many employees now work from home. However, data analysed in the report shows there has been an increase in the proportion of pupils who do work experience between 2018/9 and 2023/4, from 43% to 49%.

Chris Kenyon, CEO of The Key Group - a leading provider of  technology and content to schools and trusts to enable them to work smarter and save time - described the report’s findings as “deeply worrying”.

“It is deeply worrying that there is such unequal access to work experience. When we look at who is missing out, it is those who are more disadvantaged, have special educational needs, or who live in certain regions of the country. It’s clear that we need to increase their opportunity to access work experience because they are arguably among the ones who need it the most.

“We don’t yet know what this Government means by its pledge to guarantee every young person two weeks’ work experience - whether that might extend to sixth formers, or include employers coming into schools, or virtual work experience. But we do know that we are currently a long way off  giving two-weeks’ worth of placements to all pupils in year 10 - a time when they are making important choices about what they might want to do later in life. There is a huge challenge ahead to fulfil that election pledge for all pupils.

“We need to encourage many more employers to step up to take on more pupils. To meet a target of all pupils doing two weeks’ work experience, we will need to quadruple the number of placement days offered by employers. We also need to make it easier for employers to make contact with schools, for example via a standardised form on all secondary school websites.”

Claire Pritchard, CEO of Broadleaf Partnership Trust in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, which has five schools, said:

“There is so much our children can learn in the classroom, but equally so many valuable experiences that we need to make sure all of our students are given to complement this - work experience and career insights are top of that list. 

“It is a ‘must’ for us that all students are exposed to the workplace during their time with us in secondary education and we work incredibly hard to achieve this, through cultivating networks across alumni, Chambers of Commerce and LinkedIn, to name a few. The obvious benefit to our learners is the exploration of a career pathway, but we also see them return with an appreciation for how this has developed their employability skills, maturity, resilience and confidence.”

Nick Brook, the CEO of Speakers for Schools, a charity that helps 11-19-year-olds to
engage with leading employers and high-profile leaders, said:

“Speakers for Schools’ ambition is that every young person has access to high-quality work experience by 2028, yet, right now, this data, alongside our own evidence, suggests more than half of young people leave school having had no work experience whatsoever. 

 “We know that  young people who do have work experience are typically from more affluent families as they often rely on parental networks to arrange it. We cannot have a system that relies on who your mum and dad know, or where they might work, to determine whether you have access to workplaces and potential future employers.”

By law, schools must record when pupils are on work experience in their morning and afternoon registers. The schools in the report used a W code to note work experience. The Key Group then analysed occurrences of this code between September 2023 and July 2024 and compared this with the same data between September 2018 and July 2019.

At the launch of Labour’s manifesto in June, Bridget Phillipson, the then Shadow Education Secretary, said: “We will train a thousand new careers advisers, and deliver two weeks’ worth of high-quality work experience for every young person at secondary school to boost opportunity.”