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Contents Careers Management Platform for partners, students, and teachers ................................................... 2

Partner Engagement Model .................................................................................................................... 3

Explore ................................................................................................................................................ 3

Assess .................................................................................................................................................. 4

Clarify & Commit ................................................................................................................................. 5

Plan ..................................................................................................................................................... 6

Student Recruitment ............................................................................................................................... 8

Marketing collateral: local press releases / articles (marketing/CSR) ................................................ 8

Social media promotion: scheduled messaging (marketing/CSR) ...................................................... 8

Taster Event attendance: 2 mentors x 3 evenings (Autumn, Spring) ................................................. 8

Induction Day challenge: team of mentors at UTC for one day (July) ................................................ 9

Student Development ........................................................................................................................... 10

CoTeach curriculum project: minimum 4 x half day visits to UTC classes ........................................ 11

Challenge Day ................................................................................................................................... 13

Technical Challenge: multiple mentors on site for one day ......................................................... 13

Concept Challenge: multiple mentors on site for one day ........................................................... 13

Work Experience: 1 or 2 x weeks ...................................................................................................... 14

Duke of York Award Group Mentoring Scheme: 4 x mornings (Autumn, Spring) ............................ 15

Awards & Competitions Sponsorship ............................................................................................... 16

Teacher Work Experience: 1 week of shadowing an employee ....................................................... 17

Employability Skills Workshops......................................................................................................... 17

Making the right first impression: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees .............................................. 17

Writing a CV: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees ............................................................................... 18

STAR Interview Techniques: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees ....................................................... 18

Presenting Skills: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees ......................................................................... 19

Student Destinations............................................................................................................................. 19

Careers Talks: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees .................................................................................. 19

Careers Fair: 1 x afternoon/early evening for 1-2 recruiters/HR employees ................................... 20

Careers Management Platform for partners, students, and teachers

Our students use the platform to:• Create careers plans• Provide feedback on events• Build a careers passport• Access careers resources• Focus on skills development

We work with industry partners to embed skills development into activities• Mentoring programmes• Project based learning• Employability skills workshops• Career talks• Challenge days• And more

The UTC uses the Grofar platform to:• Manage our partner database and events• Manage work experience• Manage careers programmes• Gather feedback on activities to enhance future delivery• Collate and analyse data to improve the student experience• Produce reports for Ofsted and 3rd parties

Partner Engagement Model Explore

Explore AssessClarify

&Commit

Plan

Overview:As an industry partner, you have the opportunity to engage with students at the UTC, who are studying the skills that you need to support your business.

As an industry partner, you are invested in developing the talent pipeline, both in terms of the quality of skills entering the market, and the number of young people that aspire to enter your industry.

The Partner Engagement Process provides clear guidance on how to engage with the UTC to raise awareness of your organisation with our students, and how to support us in developing the talent pipeline.Each of our activities are described on our website within the Employer Engagement section.

If you wish to review our activities in a document please download the Partner Engagement Brief here.

We ask that partners are engaged in all 3 stages of our talent pipeline programme, namely: student recruitment, student development, student destinations.

If your organisation is not actively recruiting apprentices, but is committed to developing the talent pipeline to address the skills gap in industry, or wishes to raise awareness of graduate career programmes, you are sti ll considered as a partner if you contribute to the talent pipeline programme.

We differentiate between an employer that seeks to recruit students, and a partner that proactively supports our talent pipeline by working with us to recruit students and develop them throughout their learning journey.

Priority at careers fairs and careers talk days is given to partners that engage with us throughout the talent pipeline programme.

Explore Assess Clarify & Commit Plan

Please take some time to understand how the UTC engages with industry.

• Partner Engagement Brief (PDF)• Partner Engagement Summary (PDF)• Case studies • Social media pack• Events calendar• Full curriculum by specialism

Partner Engagement Model

Assess


&Commit

Plan









Our Resource Calculator (spreadsheet) enables you to calculate the total number of resource days you might contribute to the talent pipeline programme at the UTC.

Please take some time to identify the activities which you would like to support, and use the Resource Calculator to check how many resource days are needed to achieve this.

You will note on the Resource Calculator that a number of our activities require specialist resource, and some activities require HR/recruitment resource. This helps to spread the commitment across multiple departments where possible, whilst still being involved in every step of the talent pipeline programme.

Please always remember that every student you engage with at the UTC will be studying the specialist skills you are seeking.

Becoming a UTC partner


Clarify & Commit


&Commit

Plan









It is important that you feel confident as a partner in committing to the UTC.

Each month, we hold an open day for partners at the UTC, where you can discuss any aspects of potential engagement. This is both for existing and potential partners.

Please simply send an introductory email and provide details of what you would like to discuss when we meet.

Please include a completed Resource Calculator spreadsheet to indicate which activities you would like to support, along with any questions or queries you would like to discuss, as this helps us to prepare and make the most of our first meeting.

You may also meet other partners on the day, which is a key benefit of joining the UTC community.



Plan


&Commit

Plan









Once you are comfortable with committing resources to support our activities, we start planning the activities.

We ask that each member of your organisation that will work with us provides details of their specified activities on our Grofar careers management platform, so that we can easily identify individuals against planned activities. We will send out a link that makes it easy for your team to register.

Learn more about Grofar here

There will sometimes be the need to schedule further meetings with specific teaching staff to run through any more detailed requirements prior to activities being delivered.



Talent Pipeline Development Programme This programme is for partners that are seeking a steady annual intake of apprentices at level 3, level 4, or at degree apprenticeship level.

The UTC works with the partner to craft an integrated programme of all of the engagement activities described in the Partner Engagement Brief.

Rather than choosing form the range of engagement activities the UTC runs, you would be involved in all aspects, and focus your efforts on a cohort from 5-15 students in Year 12, and in Year 13.

The programme includes the following activities.

Engagement Benefits Group Mentoring Programme Build relationships with students Work experience Give students exposure to your working

environment to identify their interests and skills Employability skills workshops Support students in developing the employability

skills that you need CoTeach project based learning Support students in developing the technical skills

needed within their specialism, and to understand the relevance of these skills in your industry

Please take a look at the Talent Pipeline Development Programme structure for further details (PDF).

Student Recruitment

To build the talent pipeline for young engineers and digital specialists / computer scientists, it is vital to recruit our target numbers of students to the UTC each year. To achieve this, we seek the support of our industry partners in the following ways.

Marketing collateral: local press releases / articles (marketing/CSR) The UTC seeks to recognise the valuable input of our industry partners. We write up stories of all partner activities and publish these on our social media channels.

To support us in this, we ask that wherever possible, you publish independent news stories in line with your organisation’s marketing guidelines, to endorse the quality and relevance of our learning environment.

Case Study 1: Cisco Women in Tech

Case Study 2: Internet of Things Summer Project

Case Study 3: Prudential Talent

Case Study 4: John Lewis Partnership

Social media promotion: scheduled messaging (marketing/CSR) We ask that your organisation publicise your input at the UTC on your social media channels, so that the UTC benefits from raised awareness within your extended network. Please see our Social Media Pack for more details.

Taster Event attendance: 2 mentors x 3 evenings (Autumn, Spring) The Taster Event is the primary recruitment vehicle for recruiting new students for the UTC.

Staff, students, and partners are all on site for 3 evenings of the year, in the autumn term and early spring. This provides prospective students and parents with the opportunity to meet us and to learn more about how the educational model at the UTC differs from a traditional educational environment.

The face to face contact with our industry partners is key to making these events a success. We ask the following:

• 2 representatives from your organisation attend on each evening • Make sure your representatives know how your organisation is supporting the UTC • Bring a display banner or two! • Have details on careers in your company available • Arrive at 4pm to set up and catch up with students and teachers

http://www.utcreading.co.uk/_site/data/files/1E911D5527970F9A4CAA5F0E82434100.PDF

http://www.utcreading.co.uk/_site/data/files/case%20studies/D899FBAD2AF92D450419053B229D4707.pdf

http://www.utcreading.co.uk/_site/data/files/DACB20D7ED9CB448F6D3FD207550192D.pdf

http://www.utcreading.co.uk/_site/data/files/case%20studies/8F22D5AE7B575119C03D2AD57DE23267.pdf

Induction Day challenge: team of mentors at UTC for one day (July)

Each year in early July we welcome our newly registered students to the UTC to meet partner organisations and take part in team building challenges. This helps the new students to get to know each other and to undertake a practical activity together with specialists from industry. This serves to build the anticipation of the students’ new start at the UTC in September, and gives them the chance to meet the other students starting in the same year.

We ask that industry partners create a simple challenge that is related to your working environment. You will need to provide resources. Please see here for an example of what this looks like.

Resource commitment: 4 x people on site for one day, running 2 x 3-hour sessions.

Student Development The learning environment at the UTC is geared towards developing students’ practical skills needed by industry, to prepare students and make them ready for work.

UTC skills focus

Here at the UTC, we categorise skills development into the following areas, many of which are interlinked or overlap. It is important for all stakeholders to understand the relevance of the activities to each of these skills.

Each of the activities we run refer to these skills to identify the focus for types of partner engagement.

Skills:

• Communication • Drive • Flexibility • Initiative and enterprise • Learning • Perseverance • Planning and organising • Problem solving • Self-management • Team work • Technology • Time management

CoTeach curriculum project: minimum 4 x half day visits to UTC classes

We seek to provide each student with an employer-led project each year during their studies at the UTC, in order to enable the student to fully understand the relevance of their learning to the world of work, and to give them visibility of career pathways within key local employers.

As an industry partner, you will work with our teaching staff to identify learning topics that can be applied to your working environment. Together you will design a project brief that the students will work on in small teams for an extended period of time. As the project sponsor, you will be responsible for:

• Crafting the project brief with the teaching staff • Launching the project (either at the UTC or at your business premises) • Visiting the UTC during normal lessons to deliver knowledge transfer session(s) • Visiting the UTC during normal lessons to conduct milestone assessment of student projects • Visiting the UTC during normal lessons to judge final project presentations and choose

winning team

See CoTeach Agreement for further details

CoTeach Agreement Supporting project based learning at the UTC

The purpose of CoTeach is to deliver a structured engagement experience for students at the UTC, so that they meet industry professionals, and identify the relevance of their learning to the working world in a positive way

CoTeach should be aspirational – fun, interesting, challenging, surprising, motivational, engaging

As a UTC, we agree to:

• Assign a UTC teacher who will serve as your primary point of contact and support you in understanding the learning aims of the curriculum, the structure of a lesson, and how to plan in advance to deliver an engaging experience

• Provide you with access to students via work experience placements, careers fairs, careers talks

As a Partner, you agree to:

• Commit the resources need to support the delivery of a successful CoTeach project • Ensure the person/people you choose for the CoTeach project are enthusiastic about

working in a classroom environment

As a partner representative, you agree to:

• Work closely with the UTC teacher to define and design an engaging project that meets the learning aims of the curriculum and that maintains the high standard of teaching expected within a UTC environment

• Commit to creating and delivering a CoTeach project with a minimum of 6 x half-day visits to the UTC

• Produce professional documentation and supporting materials that support the CoTeach project

As a UTC teacher, you agree to:

• Communicate promptly and professionally with the partner • Support the partner in understanding the education landscape in order to produce a real

world project that meets the learning aims of the curriculum in the UTC • Provide guidance and feedback on the project specification that is written by the partner • Manage the classroom environment to ensure that the partner is able to enjoy a rewarding

experience in the classroom

As a UTC student, you agree to:

• Be attentive at all times, and seek to achieve the learning aims of the CoTeach project • Complete work on time in order to present your final project to the partner in line with the

schedule

Challenge Day The UTC seeks to provide opportunities for our students to engage in competitive activities whilst working in teams outside of the curriculum. As an industry partner, you will define the challenge and provide the people to present the challenge to the students, then support them throughout the day as their concepts develop. The UTC will organise the teams, and manage scheduling and logistics.

Technical Challenge: multiple mentors on site for one day

As an industry partner, the technology you use in your environment may be applied to give the students hands on experience and the opportunity to learn new skills, and to find out more about the technology you use in your business.

Concept Challenge: multiple mentors on site for one day

UTC students are technically competent and digitally fluent. They see the world differently. Students have worked on various concepts with industry such as identifying new ways of using Cisco IoT solutions to enhance consumer experiences in retail and cinema, using Fujitsu wearable technology to tackle issues faced in engineering, and in using big data to benefit our society with Peter Brett Associates. We provide our industry partners with the opportunity to work with teams of students to develop new uses for technology.

Work Experience: 1 or 2 x weeks Work experience is cited by Careers & Enterprise Company and independent studies as being the single most influential contributor to students’ career aspirations. Providing meaningful placements for students is central to our drive to build competence, confidence, and passion for a student’s learning journey. We seek to secure placements from every industry partner we engage with at the UTC. This is your best opportunity to build relationships with students and to assess their skills and aptitude in your working environment.

Duke of York Award Group Mentoring Scheme: 4 x mornings (Autumn, Spring)

The Duke of York Awards are available exclusively to UTC students, in recognition of their technical achievements. The UTC seeks mentors to support the students in preparing for their awards application close to the end of their Year 13 studies.

A mentor will commit to visiting the UTC on 4 mornings, in October, December, January, and March, to meet with up to 3 groups of 5 students, and spending an hour with each group. The subject of each mentoring session is as follows:

1. Getting to know you – building rapport with your student group 2. STEM Insights – showing students details of technology you work with and describing the

skills and knowledge you need to work with the technology 3. Short term goals and reflections – sharing your experience of working towards goals and

meeting objectives, to help students appreciate the need for planning and time management

4. STEM In-Depth – each student in the group presents on a STEM topic of their choice. As a mentor your role will be to facilitate, provide constructive feedback, and encourage discussion amongst the group on the STEM topic of each student

Awards & Competitions Sponsorship

The UTC seeks to distinguish outstanding achievements by our students. As an industry partner, your recognition is of great value to our student community. Whether it is vouchers, new equipment, or a VIP day at your offices, the acknowledgement of their success is most satisfying when it comes from an external party with industry credibility.

Teacher Work Experience: 1 week of shadowing an employee In our commitment to increase the relevance of our teaching subjects to the world of work, we wish to give each teacher the chance to experience industry at least one week every two years. This is usually scheduled for the second or third week in July each year. The teacher is tasked with identifying ways in which they can link their curriculum to your working environment. As such, they will shadow one of your employees (or one per day for the week), to seek out relevant activities to embed within their curriculum. Once they have completed a placement, they will become an advocate and endorser of your organisation to their students.

Employability Skills Workshops Making the right first impression: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees

This is an interactive session where students are provided with the opportunity to practise introducing themselves confidently. The format for this session is as follows:

• Introduction by teacher • Industry partner gives an introduction, explaining why the first impression is so important,

then giving examples in their working life of when you meet people for the first time (internal and external meetings, networking events)

• Industry partner describes key elements of the first impression (look smart and well groomed, make eye contact, smile, give a firm handshake)

• Industry partner might want to use some slides to support these messages

• Industry partner then instructs students to ‘mingle’ with each other, practise the first impression key elements, and to find out something new about their peers by asking polite questions (themes can be used to increase students’ focus)

Writing a CV: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees All students at the UTC are expected to practise CV writing. This session will enable them to improve areas of their CVs, or to add areas that they had not included previously. Many companies have different views if the perfect CV. We would ask that you work with a format that your organisation would value. Format for this session is as follows:

• Introduction by teacher • Industry partner gives an introduction, explaining the need for a comprehensive CV that

details all relevant experience and information that might be of value to you • Industry partner shows students some examples of a well-crafted CV (and perhaps a bad one

as well) • Industry partner instructs the students to open their digital CV in Word, and to review their

current draft against the information you have provided them. Their objective is to make improvements wherever possible

• Whilst the students are undertaking this activity, the industry partner should circulate from student to student, reviewing their draft, and providing constructive feedback and guidance for each student

• At the end of the session, the industry partner should provide a summary feedback to the student group, encouraging them to review their CV and update it regularly to include any employer-related activity they undertake at the UTC

STAR Interview Techniques: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees All UTC students will need to be prepared for their first interview. The UTC promotes the STAR interview technique as a way of preparing for the interview. The workshop format is as follows:

• Introduction by teacher • Industry partner gives an introduction, explaining the need to adopt a clear communicating

style to respond to questions in an interview. It is useful to describe the difference to students between closed and open questions, and to give an analogy between STAR and a generic story that might be told as a fairy tale, or a hero’s journey in many films. STAR then becomes a relevant and relatable concept, rather than an unfamiliar structure to learn from scratch

• Industry partner instructs students to think of a project or occasion in the UTC career that they can use to demonstrate key characteristics of their learning journey i.e. working as a team, overcoming difficulty, learning a new technique or technology.

• Each student should then draft their ‘story’ using the STAR structure o Situation – what was the situation? o Task – what was the task I was given or took on? o Action – what actions did I take to accomplish the task? o Result – how can I describe the result as an end to the story?

• Industry partner instructs the students to work in pairs to practise telling their story to their partner. Students should be encouraged to ‘peer review’ i.e. to offer constructive feedback to their partner on how to improve the story or to add further details

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_task,_action,_result

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_task,_action,_result

https://www.slideshare.net/brianleonard/camp-creative-webinar-the-heros-journey-and-your-brand

• At the end of the session, the industry partner invites 2-3 students to tell their STAR story to the class, and to give constructive feedback on the story

Presenting Skills: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees At the core of every student’s personal development is the need to stretch themselves, to work outside their comfort zone. Perhaps the most challenging scenario is to stand up in front of a large number of people and present on a topic. This is an area that the UTC focuses on as a means of building confidence. A suggested format for the workshop is as follows:

• Introduction by teacher • Industry partner gives an introduction, and provides examples of presentations you make in

your working life. To build rapport with students is it useful to describe the first presentation you ever made and describe your nerves, and to perhaps reflect on how your presenting style has changed over the years. You might also wish to touch on the use of technology as an aid if you favour PowerPoint

• Industry partner instructs students to prepare a quick presentation in pairs. They have 5 minutes to prepare the presentation, which should last 1-2 minutes. They may be provided with one of the following topics as a way of focusing their attention:

o A technology I am passionate about o Where I see myself in 5 years o What I like most about learning

• Industry partner then instructs each pair of students to stand at the front of the class and to present to their peers. Subject to time, industry partner should provide feedback to the students on positive aspects of their presentations, to promote effective techniques used

Student Destinations Careers Talks: 1 x morning for 1-2 employees

Our students choose a specialism when the join the UTC. To fuel their interests and give them a clear understanding of how their career might look, we

schedule 4 x careers talks per year within their specialism to enable the students to develop a clear picture of the opportunities available to them. This is a great opportunity for you as an employer to raise awareness of your apprenticeship and graduate opportunities to develop a talent pipeline to streamline your recruitment efforts. Over the course of a morning, you will deliver up to 4 x 1-hour careers talks to groups of students.

Careers Fair: 1 x afternoon/early evening for 1-2 recruiters/HR employees Once a year, the UTC invites local and national employers that are seeking to recruit within our specialisms to meet our students during the course of an afternoon, and to provide details of careers within your organisation. You will be given 5-10 minutes with each group, and will meet every student that is studying the specialism at our UTC. Following the afternoon activity, parents of Year 13 students are invited to meet industry partners to gain a full understanding of apprenticeship and graduate careers available. This is a great opportunity to raise your profile within our student and parent community (and teachers as well).

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