Work experience

Modern work experience gives every young person access to progressive, high-quality, multiple workplace experiences, throughout their education journey.

This equitable approach will facilitate a variety of experiences starting early, connecting education and young people with industry and unlocking the skills and opportunities of the future workforce. This supports the government’s ambition of:

- A minimum of two weeks’ worth of work experience by Year 11, made up of:

  • At least one week of work experience activities in Years 7–9
  • At least one week of placements in Years 10–11

- Access for all learners, regardless of background, ensuring equitable participation

- Flexibility for schools, learners, and employers to design experiences that meet local and individual needs

What is the value of modern work experience?

Modern work experience will help young people to make informed choices and improve career readiness and employability by offering multiple, variable and targeted experiences throughout their education journey.

For support structuring impactful experiences for primary school pupils to prepare them for transition into modern work experience, access The Careers and Enterprise Company's career-related learning outcomes and objectives for primary pupils.

What is modern work experience?

A programme of modern work experience should:

- Prioritise young people who are missing out and provide targeted support

- Start early, allowing access to multiple, different industries and occupations

- Include experiences that are employer-led in their design

- Be underpinned by learning 
outcomes, to ensure a progressive high-quality approach

- Enable meaningful relationships between the employer and young person

- Offer meaningful experiences as defined in updated Gatsby Benchmark 6

In person work experience

We understand that organising work experience placements for the young people that you work with can be time consuming and difficult. Dorset Careers Hub has designed a guide and put together a toolkit that we hope will ease your workload.

The concise and user-friendly guide and comprehensive suite of well-designed digital forms provides everything you need to set-up, regulate, safeguard and evaluate your programme. With three main documents, one for schools, employers and parents/carers, our toolkit covers all your questions and specifically addresses key concerns around health and safety in the workplace and safeguarding students. 

The work experience toolkit for schools can be downloaded.