How do Speakers for Schools use evidence to inform policy, shape practices, and improve social mobility?

Speakers for Schools has run numerous successful campaigns since its launch – some connected to raising awareness of a particular employment growth area such as Green Skills and Discover! Creative Careers, and others that have focused on driving change on a national scale such as our current hard-hitting Work Experience for All campaign which makes the case for making work experience a universal right. If you would like to know more, please visit our Campaigns page on our website where you can read about all of these campaigns in more detail.

We regularly publish research reports and papers that document our findings and provide evidence-based insights into specific aspects of our research and policy work. If you would like to learn more about our research, please visit the Research page on our website where you will find examples of the independent research we have previously commissioned or conducted ourselves, including past research papers and reports.

At Speakers for Schools, we aim to challenge the status quo and level the playing field by ensuring that young people attending state schools and colleges can access the same quality, quantity and types of career-related interventions and opportunities typically available to those attending independent schools. There is already a growing body of compelling evidence that speaks to the powerful positive impact of work experience on young people’s outcomes. In recent years, Speakers for Schools has added to this evidence by carrying out our own independent research that proves doing work experience while in education increases a young person’s future salary and improves their employability. Yet this research also shows that access to work experience is neither universal nor fair since privately educated young people are twice as likely to complete multiple work experiences as their state-educated peers and have significantly better access to work experience in many high-status professions thanks to their familial connections. It is a similar picture when it comes to school talks… young people from state schools and colleges have fewer opportunities to access to people in high-aspiration jobs than their fee-paying peers who benefit from studying in schools and colleges with more resources for careers education provision and who are also more likely to have people doing such jobs in their familial network to provide direct inspiration. By focussing our efforts on removing structural barriers and providing high-quality interventions and opportunities to state-educated students that they would otherwise struggle to have, Speakers for Schools aims to close the opportunity gap.

At Speakers for Schools, we aim to challenge the status quo and level the playing field by ensuring that young people attending state schools and colleges can access the same quality, quantity and types of career-related interventions and opportunities typically available to those attending independent schools. There is already a growing body of compelling evidence that speaks to the powerful positive impact of work experience on young people’s outcomes. In recent years, Speakers for Schools has added to this evidence by carrying out our own independent research that proves doing work experience while in education increases a young person’s future salary and improves their employability. Yet this research also shows that access to work experience is neither universal nor fair since privately educated young people are twice as likely to complete multiple work experiences as their state-educated peers and have significantly better access to work experience in many high-status professions thanks to their familial connections. It is a similar picture when it comes to school talks… young people from state schools and colleges have fewer opportunities to access to people in high-aspiration jobs than their fee-paying peers who benefit from studying in schools and colleges with more resources for careers education provision and who are also more likely to have people doing such jobs in their familial network to provide direct inspiration. By focussing our efforts on removing structural barriers and providing high-quality interventions and opportunities to state-educated students that they would otherwise struggle to have, Speakers for Schools aims to close the opportunity gap.