By Lauren Valentine, Senior Programme Manager, Brightside
This blog is part of our NEON Summer Symposium 2024 series.
I’m Lauren, Senior Programme Manager at the online mentoring charity Brightside. We design and deliver online mentoring programmes, connecting young people with inspiring mentors to help them make confident and informed decisions about their futures.
In my session at the NEON Summer Symposium 2024, I shared our findings from surveying 16,000 young people. Listening to youth voice is incredibly important to us at Brightside: as a charity, the first step towards helping young people is to understand what they need in the first place.
It feels safe to say that young people are concerned about the future, and we have the data and the detail to demonstrate how and why that’s true.
Results from the survey
When asked if they knew what qualifications or training they’d need to get the job they want, over half (55%) said no or not sure. What’s more, almost 1 in 5 didn’t know what career field they were interested in, even with a list to choose from. Others told us in their open-text responses that they had lots of ideas but didn’t know how to go about making a decision.
The data showed that young people don’t have consistent access to relatable role models (what we call social capital in our impact reporting). Knowing who to ask for advice about education and employment is key for young people to make confident and informed decisions about their next steps, yet 35% of those we surveyed said they didn’t have anyone to ask.
When we looked at the relationship between access to advice and knowing how to get the jobs they want, we found that learners who have people they can speak to about careers and education are 80% more likely to know what qualifications or training they need.
A Year 9 learner from Rochdale wrote, “I don’t know at all what I want to do when I am older as a job and what to pick as a GCSE. No-one has really told me what I can pick and explained each option.”
This really shines a light on how necessary 1:1 guidance and mentoring is.
Challenges for the sector
Our survey findings also present some priority areas for the sector:
- Engaging key influencers
We asked learners to choose the top three people who influence their decisions about the future. Parents and carers came out on top, with 83% choosing them as one of their top three, followed by friends, then subject teachers, with careers adviser only being selected by 19%. This highlights a need to involve parents and carers in outreach activities to support them to advise and guide their young people, but we all know that this can be challenging.
- Targeting those who need it most
In every survey, we ask young people how confident they feel about their next steps. In our 23-24 survey, we began to ask if they were interested in the opportunity to have an online mentor. We looked at the relationship between the responses to these two questions and found that learners who are less confident in their decisions about the future are actually less likely to put themselves forward for this type of intervention. This emphasised the importance of working with schools to encourage participation among those who would benefit the most.
So how do we use this data?
To help schools build high-impact careers programmes that change the trajectories of young people’s lives.
- Informing schools’ CEIAG strategies
The schools we work with tell us that the data from the survey helps them to map out careers activities throughout the year, such as deciding on the external speakers they bring in or the events they hold in school.
The survey also helps with buy-in from young people, increasing participation and engagement with consequent activities, as learners know they’ve been selected for an opportunity based on their responses. For example, teachers can tell learners that they’ve been chosen for an apprenticeships-themed mentoring programme because they expressed an interest in apprenticeships in the survey.
A career lead in a multi-academy trust (MAT) fed back that they appreciate the individual-level data because the MAT was so big and guidance often felt generic. The raw data that we share with schools allows them to zoom in on individual learners, helping them to meet their unique needs.
- Incorporating youth voice into programme design
The survey results are a source of primary research for us, allowing us to test our assumptions about young people’s knowledge and confidence when it comes to choosing a future pathway. The results show us where we need to focus the content of our upcoming programmes.
We recently used the data as a starting point when designing a new programme specifically for pre-16 learners. We analysed the responses to ‘do you have any concerns about your next steps’ and looked for key themes. This provided us with topics for mentees and mentors to cover on the programme, having tested them first with focus groups and our Youth Board.
What’s next?
Our data shows that young people lack role models and knowledge of their career options and, although our online mentoring programmes are proven to have a positive impact, there’s still so much work to do with schools to make sure we can make a difference to every single pupil.
We’d like to start gathering longitudinal data by using this survey as a baseline, comparing results year on year, and creating comparator groups between those who did and didn’t take part in mentoring to support with assessing impact.
We’re also keen to gather more specific feedback from schools on how they use the data beyond their involvement with Spotlight.
At the moment, we’re able to support one year group through the career game and 100 learners through mentoring, but Spotlight doesn’t reach every young person. We’re keen on collaborating with other organisations so that we can provide more comprehensive support and resources to schools.
Find out more about our Spotlight programme for schools or follow us on LinkedIn!