...to think there is a flaw in the system for school work experience placements?

The barrier isn't confidentiality, but age.
We have work experience students from 16, we have a Teams with then first so we can get an idea whether they have the maturity/common sense/commuinication skills/empathy to do a placement with us, we also need a reference from their school stating the are reliable, polite etc. Then they have to sign a confidentiality agreement, as does their parent.
Mental health may be a particularly hard area to get work experience in, due to the potential risks that a 14 year old may just not be ready to deal with yet. I remember doing a MH placement at 20 years old and at times felt quite unsafe and unprepared.

My DS is 14 too and has been told he needs to sort out his work experience placement by April - school no longer allocate these like they did when I was that age. But almost all people I know either work from home or are in a profession that doesn’t have insurance for a 14 year old. I have no idea what he’ll do.

Definitely hard to arrange as school say no remote working which is hard as many office jobs are now remote or at least hybrid. No work experience alongside a sole trader (obviously safe guarding) which I understand but often rules out trade type jobs. Many of my son's peers went to their old primary schools and none of them took it seriously or want to work in schools. My son was lucky DH's office took him on - they are in the office 4 days a week.

I work in the office of a school.
We offer the usual work experience in the classroom but we also offer and I'm very grateful for the ones who want office experience.
In return for lots of photocopying, filing etc I usually try to find them a mini project they can do that they could talk about in an interview.
Even vets have paperwork to file....
We're covered DBS wise cos everyone has one and the work experience is a child.
So just a suggestion for people racking their brain.

I used to work in education and depending on staffing levels, yes we took work experience kids but only if there was plenty of staff to supervise the kid because, to be blunt, work experience kids often were often stressful to manage, they'd expect to be teaching lessons and get arsey when given tasks like washing paint pots. Not all kids were like that but a lot were.

Yes, two different (Primary) schools I worked at ended up stopping taking youngsters for the 'work experience' weeks, because they ended up needing a lot of staff time to supervise them and to sort out issues caused by them. School just didn't have the spare staffing to continue doing this.

At her age the most important factors are a) excellent academics and b)building up a CV showing lots of experience handling different types of animals.

At 14 she could volunteer for Riding for the Disabled and learn to handle horses (min age 12). https://rda.org.uk/rda-groups/, work with a dog groomer and handle dogs, work at a chattery ditto cats, help at a riding stables - horses again. Ask to help out at a local farm (handle cows, pigs). So lots of possibilities.

Work experience is almost entirely done via the parents network so it’s actually pretty unfair. No one really wants a teen hanging about for a week. One of ours wants to do what we do which was easy. The second we had to use family members / call in favours. If your parents aren’t connected you’re stuffed.

Also my work experience put me off a job I would actually have been awesome at. I was stuck in a side office stamping books all week with no shadowing at all. I would have loved to do this job but how I was treated put me off for way too long and now it's too late for me sadly

For medicine, it's easier to do stuff that is job adjacent.

You can't do work experience following a doctor but you can do St John ambulance cadets and get first aid qualifications and go out on duty and use them.

You can volunteer in a care home.

This. There must be loads of jobs which can't offer work experience. Prison officer. Pilot. Cruise ship singer to name but a few. Your dd should focus on transferable skills and think outside of the box. For example Pets at Home. Smaller animal charity. Head office of an animal charity. She will still learn a bit about animals but also about communication, reliability, the general public, admin type stuff. All useful in the work place

At her age, work experience is about being out of the school environment and surrounded by adults. It’s an immersive experience but important not to get too hung up on specific careers at this age.

It doesn’t need to be so directly related to your career though, OP. It’s work experience, not work shadowing.

So honestly at this age helping out serving meals in an old folks home would be just as helpful - customer-facing, caring, understanding roles in a service industry.

Then dc can get work experience with animals later on.

I would also echo what pp said - many schools abandoned work experience at this age not just due to insurance but also child protection issues. Too many employers were fearful of accusations and couldn’t meet the dbs clearance requirements.

My daughter is planning her work experience at the mo, and it seems very much like a waste of time to me.

She already has a part time job, working Saturday afternoons in a local cafe. I accept many other teenagers don't, but most of the opportunities here available seem to be focused on hospitality or teaching. I did my work experience back in the 90s in a marketing dept when I was in Y11, and then at sixth form with the local police (I had wide ranging career aspirations... 🤣🤣) don't think any of those types of options seem to be available now.

I wonder really how helpful it all is at GCSE age.

I think at this age it’s not so much about the field but about the work experience in general. They need to experience turning up for work on time, taking a lunch break and making sure you go back on time, having a bit of responsibility, talking to adult colleagues who you might have little in common with etc etc. I worked in a garden centre for mine - I have no interest in plants or gardening but I do think it was still valuable.

The time for actual vet experience will be later, before she applies for university. You need a certain number of hours before you can apply, and most vets will accept them at 16 for this.

It already had with some schools. One year (about 10 years ago) my manager’s DD came into our office for a week, maybe two, can’t remember. When her sister was in the same school year, one year later, asked manager if she’d be coming in but he said their school had stopped doing it as the majority of kids couldn’t find anywhere willing to take them.

I think for health care patient confidentiality would be a massive issue and can understand why they limit that. (It'd be very difficult to be completely confident that a 14 year old there for a week understood they cannot mention anything or who they saw at that setting. And it'd be hard to make sure patients were comfortable)

I also get the insurance and h&s aspect, we have difficulties with that at my work as under 16s can't be in labs - realistically there's nothing interesting we can get them to do!

OP as others have suggested I'd go for anything vaguely animal related, for work experience or longer term volunteering or work. If not, I'd go for anything where she's interacting with people as vets also need good human communication.

The Association of British insurers says

"The insurance industry has agreed that students on work experience placements should be treated as employees for the purposes of insurance. Such placements must conform to the requirements of the Education Act 1996 and any other regulations in force at the time. Most Employers’ Liability policies will have a definition of “employee” that covers students on work experience placements
You may have a Public Liability insurance policy. This will not cover students when they are at work. Most Public Liability policies will cover any accidental injury or damage to third party property arising from the actions of the student on work experience."

The Education Act 1996 says

" The enactments relating to the prohibition or regulation of the employment of children shall not apply to the employment of a child in his last two years of compulsory schooling if the employment is in pursuance of arrangements made
(a) by a [local authority], or
(b) by the governing body of a school on behalf of such an authority,
with a view to providing him with work experience as a part of his education."

Employee liability insurance does cover work experience students.

Yes good idea. My son’s friend has worked for a few years at a boarding kennels - he was probably 14/15 when he started I think.

It is hard to get a meaningful experience. Many places say they have concerns about insurance or safeguarding. Increasingly office type work is done from home and the average home worker doesn't want a 15 year old in thier house either.

There is also the situation that all the secondaries seem to pick the same week. So willing employers, who might have taken 3 students across a year, only take 1.

Employee insurance wouldn't cover them anyway as they nit an employee. I woukd have thought public liability would have been more apt as they are a visitor on the vet's premises.

OP is absolutely correct. This problem is not industry-specific. Business insurance does not typically cover individuals under 18. This is why it is also difficult for YP to get Saturday jobs from 16.

My vet friend says they're short staffed and absolutely swamped. Every single person I know who works in healthcare is the same. I wonder if this is the issue, that there's not the spare staff to supervise a child.

I also think some people have unrealistic expectations of what work experience is, some kids and their parents genuinely do expect the kids to be doing the actual career, when it's actually more about learning what the workplace is like, taking orders from others. The structure of the day etc.

I used to work in education and depending on staffing levels, yes we took work experience kids but only if there was plenty of staff to supervise the kid because, to be blunt, work experience kids often were often stressful to manage, they'd expect to be teaching lessons and get arsey when given tasks like washing paint pots. Not all kids were like that but a lot were.

I think that's what's behind places like vets and hospitals saying no. Of course people get experience, but they tend to be older and on placements alongside being educated on how to that job too. All the popular types of careers will have all the local kids wanting to do work experience.

Vets don't just work in a vet practice, your daughter could get experience of working with animals and their health via things like offering to volunteer in a dog shelter, or a farm and she may stand a better chance if she offers this when every other 14 year old isn't looking for work experience placements.

Luckily a lot of universities are recognising this and are now only requiring that applicants have some experience in dealing with people. This can be from paid work whils in 6th form/college or volunteering.