Explore Your Future

Led By: Jess Fisher – Enterprise & Skills Executive, Portsmouth City Council

The recently re-designed Explore Your Future (EYF) offers meaningful encounters for 11–14-year-olds with local employers from a range of industries and sectors. The programme encourages early consideration of the wide variety of career opportunities in and around the city. 

Business leaders and industry professionals share their own career journeys and then deliver a choice of three engaging workshops, from hands-on sessions with industry equipment to responding to real employer challenges and designing pitches. These workshops give pupils genuine insight into the type of work in that industry.

Objectives

  1. To inspire Portsmouth’s Year 7-9 pupils through a meaningful interaction with the world of work right on their doorstep. 

  2. To connect local businesses with their future workforce 

  3. To offer pupils insight into different industries and sectors in the local area 

  4. To inspire pupils to consider their future careers 

Current Initiatives

Impact

We surveyed all 96 pupils involved in the redesigned EYF pilot before and after their sessions. Below shows the proportion who said they knew or felt ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a lot’: 

Before After
Knowledge of the sector
9%
63%
Knowledge of job opportunities in Portsmouth
15%
55%
Confidence to apply for jobs in the future
27%
47%

Explore Your Future is delivered in partnership with:

       

The latest news from Explore Your Future:

Testimonials

"It made me think about the wider picture in careers... loved it."
"I learned there are unique and interesting job opportunities in Portsmouth."
“Finding new and exciting extra-curricular opportunities to inspire and engage our students career aspirations can be challenging with so much information available. Finding ways to present this in a way our students can relate is our main focus. Shaping Portsmouth are always available to help support us with this by running events such as this. The students who took part in the pilot really enjoyed it. They got a wealth of knowledge about a major employer in the city and have been inspired to look into careers in design, marketing and events management. Thank you to Sam and the team from Shaping Portsmouth.”
Lucy Passmore
Lucy PassmoreHead of Student Enrichment, Trafalgar School
“Every one of the students was a fabulous credit to the school and I am convinced every one will be a future leader and or mover and shaker! What an education Georgina and I got – it was a cross between getting a grilling on Question Time and being run over by a bus!”
Dave Green
Dave GreenManaging Director, Lightning Safety Systems

Want to know more about this programme? Contact us.