I don't want ds to do work experience.

It can be impossible to find worthwhile WE placements for hordes of y10s simultaneously.

I'm a teacher & we use the freed up time to visit the kids at their placements. One of my very 'average' English GCSE students is a changed girl after two weeks in the stockroom of Wilkinsons; she says she'd rather gnaw her own feet off than do that again, so is now working her butt off.

A prediction of 10 A - C sounds unusually vague to me. We'd normally give a two grade range of 'expected' & 'target'. Tbh, if your ds isn't being predicted As, you may be unrealistic to think that tutoring will generate A/As - & if his more likely outcomes are Cs, he could probably do with the breadth of experience rather than assuming a GCSE/A-Level/degree/high-flying career trajectory.

"We don't have any relatives to ship him off too. Elderly grandparents are all we've got and my il's currently renovating a house and out at work every day won't have time or inclination."

Won't have time or inclination for what? It's not your work experience. It's not your ILs' work experience. It will be your DS's work experience - he is the one who has to sort out how he gets to work and does it on time.
This seems to be the element of work experience that you are misunderstanding. It's not about you and your hopes & wishes for DS; it's about him doing things for himself.

At my school you can go wherever you like for WE so long as they fill out the relevant insurance and health and safety forms on time. Some kids go to London or other big cities and stay with relatives while they do their WE.

"they were not on the school's list for the enforced WE"

but is this argument applicable to anybody doing WE today? I haven't heard of any secondaries around here who run a restricted list: the point that is constantly rubbed into children around here is that WE is partly an initiative test and that you will do better the more you put into it

My son did his w.e. last summer - his school apply for jobs from an approved list. It did him the power of good. He had to contact the firm to confirm his placement - not me and he had to arrange all the details etc.

Got himself up early each day and cycled to work. Sorted out his security pass etc etc.

He had the best 2 weeks ever - learning so much. He's now applying for an apprenticeship for the same company.

BTW it was a nuclear power station - some of his work (once checked) is back in the workings!

If it's part of the curriculum it should be done in school time. They can arrange their own work experience paid or otherwise in the evenings, weekends and holidays. Doing it in the evenings or weekends would rule out many kinds of work experience anyway, the majority of office jobs for a start.

I agree it would make more sense to stagger the work experience for the local schools. It's what used to happen in this area. Compulsory year 10 work experience here has now ended. We were told it was due to central government cutbacks.

I do think you are prone to a bit of exaggeration. Do each of the four local schools have 1000 year 10 pupils?

With this kind of attitude, it's no wonder youth unemployment is sky high in this country.

What happens when it comes time to apply for paid employment? Will you encourage your son to give up after he writes 2 applications?

"But surely it makes far more sense for them all to do it at the same time, then they aren't missing lessons others are being taught when they're off doing work experience? You're not making any sense"

weekends, evenings, holidays..

Cory yes I suppose there is that, but in our case there WAS a regional hospital (where a lot of my year in school later worked) and police stations and childcare settings/schools, but they were not on the school's list for the enforced WE. We didn't apply to the hosts either we applied to the co-ordinating teacher. You could arange your own within their restrictions, but with hospitals etc banned my friends and I waited till the summer or following year to apply to those kinds of places ourselves in our own time.

I don't get why you would want to deprive him of something that could turn out to be valuable experience. You seem to think the teachers are going to be sitting with their feet up for a fortnight and that's their only motivation for arranging work experience, which I am certain is not the case. You have some very odd opinions.

I can empathise with the OP, even if I don't agree with all she says.

One thing that seems important to me is that it puts adolescents in a position of dealing with adults who are neither teachers or (necessarily) friends of the family. They will need to establish their own identity, rather than being Mrs So and So's son/daughter.

I remember this being very important to me when I had my first Sat job at 14 (yes I was paid; 45p and hour as I recall), being greeted by adults in the street who had no idea who my parents were, but who definitely knew who I was.

It was almost a rite of passage for me.

If he hasn't got the motivation, he hasn't got it. What I don't understand is why exactly you think you're doing him a favour by allowing him to continue with a CBA attitude. Believe me I've worked with interns who have an attitude that they're cut out for running the place, and should just be allowed to skip ahead, even when they don't have the skills or experience to do so. Without exception they are SHIT and won't be recommended for any jobs by me at least.

You seem to think that aiming for a good job, and being able to do less high-powered jobs (or parts of jobs) when needed are mutually exclusive. In fact nearly all the time the person who can turn their hand to anything without complaint, whether that's photocopying some papers or high-level research, will be the ones who are a joy to deal with and who will get the good references and jobs.

There is stirling advice on here, I think you are just ignoring everything we've all said.

The thing is, there's always two sides to these sort of things. We had to do WE when I was at school - you didn't get to approach employers yourself though, just put down what you were interested in and got allocated a job.

I spent 2 weeks answering telephones and stuffing envelopes for the council. Admittedly, it didn't bother me, I had quite a nice time messing around with the office junior, and got a rotten report back along the lines of 'Takver doesn't show much commitment'

But, given that I already had a paid Saturday job, and then spent my summer doing very well paid CV enhancing work experience with a bond trading firm in the City (which I got by chatting up one of the customers in the shop I worked in) it wasn't really that much of an asset to my future career and certainly didn't feature on my CV

But surely it makes far more sense for them all to do it at the same time, then they aren't missing lessons others are being taught when they're off doing work experience? You're not making any sense.

Nope, it doesn't sound as though it is going to end well.

CVs, not CV's, surely.

Most companies that my peers had placements with used the W/E students in a non-menial way.

For example: In the space of a week I had covered IT, customer enquiries, genealogy, how to search gaol databases, microfiche and microfilm databases of censuses, record retrievals, catalouging, document preservation and had been shown how to clean and repair old and damaged documents. each staff member took time out of their usual work schedule to introduce me to their specialised role and to teach me the skills they used day to day. They could have just left me to make phone calls and do photocopying but that wouldnt have benefitted anyone - they wanted me to see exactly what the field of archiving entails - it was valuable in making career decisions. Equally a friend who went into an insurance company didnt just make phone calls but spent a day in each different department doing tasks specially designed to teach her about each department but allowing her to show her own potential. 6 students from my year were told that after graduating they would be welcome to come back as interns - it really IS beneficial.

OP, doesn't this demonstrate quite clearly one of the reasons finding a work experience placement is a good thing? They are all competing for the best placements - just as young people are competing for jobs in the real world. It's good practice!

Alouisee, none of dd's friends are ticking a given slot: they have all been told by the school that sorting out work experience is their responsibility and that this is an essential part of the learning experience.

Cross-posted. Ship him off to a kind relative then, it doesn't have to be done from home.

If you can afford a trip to the Galapagos, that sounds like a very interesting educational experience. It needs money though, which other work experience places presumably don't need. Why can't he join his friends at school and share the work experience "experience" ? It is difficult for me to get my head round your opposition to it.

OP MigratingChestnuts is right. Those are the dog days of the school year, he'll have done his mocks, he'll gain nothing by staying at school with the rest of his year group gone.

There are a lot of interesting places to go if you put your mind to it and think creatively. It will help him to think outside the box if you give a lead and should mean a good result for you both.

What direction does he seem to be taking, if any? Find a starting point and go from there. A first interesting placement often leads to an even more interesting subsequent one.