Work experience for yr 10, how and should I?

[2lol2lol]

(Short version) Is there any point in me trying to arrange something with cold-contacts or is it pointless because companies expect kids themselves to make contact submit their CVs, phone up, etc.? I'm trying to gauge whether I should bother.

(Long version) Start with understanding that DS is a complete & utter lazy toe rag. He will show up & do good work if I organise everything, but he will do almost nothing to arrange.

There was a thread on MN saying that work placements are huge hassle to companies and they don't get any benefit from them.

I am foreign and all this is mystery to me.

Letter from school says DS can do work experience for 2 school days end of July if we arrange it. DH will ask around but we are pesimistic about finding anything from simple networking.

Thx.

boring, I guess? Or blindingly obvious, maybe.

I can't imagine Uni or 6th form in his path, tbh!
Would it be okay for me to ask on his behalf in a charity shop, do you think? Will they disregard because he should ask for himself?

School should give you/ your son a list of companies they use regularly for him to contact. If you know other contacts you/he can approach them, but there is quite extensive paperwork they need to complete. Why not help your son draft a letter and talk through the type of places he would be interested in working as a starting point.

He needs to ask himself. When I got calls from parents, it would be a definite NO. If a pupil got in touch, and we had capacity, it would likely be a yes.

The police forces usually run great work experiences as do various media companies. If you don't think 6th form or uni are for him think about vocational areas he might be interested in, or apprenticeships he might want.

It can be difficult to arrange work experience for under 16's because of insurance, health and safety etc. The charity shop might be happy to take him but may want you there too to supervise him.

Many secondary schools have given up organising work experience because of the need to do risk assessments for insurance requirements. I don't think it matters too much what he does it's just to give him the idea that he has to dress appropriately, be in the right place at the right time, do as he is asked, be polite and respectful etc.

What are his interests? What does he enjoy doing at school ? I would certainly ask in the charity shop, local museum, animal shelter, city farm, washing up in local pub or restaurant.

Can he design a poster, do some data input, set up a Facebook page, clean out animals, stack shelves ?

Good Luck !

Oh BTW I got my kids to draft a short letter of application with their interests and experience on it.

I suppose I could print out all those suggestions and see if he's amenable to a single one. Did I mention the toe-rag bit?

School don't do anything to help, no list etc. We're just advised that the absence will be approved for work-experience purpose.

I've got two doing work experience this year. DS, year 10, has to do two whole weeks in July. Luckily we arranged his placement quite early with the National Trust so he has something reasonably interesting to do. DD, year 12 sixth form, has a week. Her's has been a nightmare to sort out. She emailed and sent letters to several local companies, none of who replied which I thought was pretty low to be honest. A simple "thanks, but no thanks" would have been nice.

To top it all, the school, in their infinite wisdom, have arranged both year 10 and year 12 work experience to run during one of the same weeks. We live in a very small rural town, with crap public transport, and a limited number of businesses, so there are at least 300 kids looking for a very small amount of placements. In the end networking came up trumps as OH knows one of the local estate agents and got DD a placement there. Charity shops are definitely worth a try too as our local ones would have taken either DC, although they were last resorts if nothing else came up.

It seems to be a real headache for all involved. We've had to fill in three page consent forms for each child. The NT have sent a 10 page consent and risk assessment for DS to read, sign and return. I'd rather they spent the time learning about budgeting and money matters which will be far more useful in the long run.

To be honest, if its only for two days, it really is probably not worth bothering with if you don't have to unless your DS has a career path in mind and can gain experience doing something that will be advantageous in the long run.

Napoleon, when you say 'we arranged' did you do all the arranging, or what did your DS himself do to get his National Trust placement?

No replies to letters sounds standard to me, sorry (not excusing just not surprised). Was my same experience job applying 2 yrs ago.

2lo2lol - DS wanted to do that particular placement ever since his sister got turned down for it in year 10 for applying too late. He wrote the initial email, which I checked over just to make sure it included everything they needed to know and since then he has dealt with chasing them up for paperwork and dealing with the bits school needs to know about.

The NT seem to be pretty on the ball with work placements and have a standard risk assessment they carry out. I think it'll be quite interesting - for the first week he's helping with admin and visitors at a local stately home as well as learning about conserving the house and artefacts. For the second week, he's going out and about with the countryside ranger.

Might be worth emailing your local NT site if you have one nearby. We found the details of the visitor services officer on their website for the initial enquiry and this was forwarded onto the relevant person.

Thx 4 replies.

I feel they need to apply themselves. That said, the company won't know if you've done some groundwork, but they need to write the letter / call in / make the phonecall themselves.
I wouldn't be optimistic for a 2 day placement though - by the time they've taken time to show them around / teach them how to do some bits and bobs, they will have left.

I arranged my DS work experience. I phoned Pets at Home and asked, they were very happy to book him in for work experience on the phone. I took him in to say hello a couple of weeks before he did the work experience.

He had a great time, they had a very good programme set up and he did a couple of days in each section, he really liked the grooming parlour. They told him to come back once he was 16 and they might have a part time job for him.

I think 15 it is a little young to make these calls.

I would always phone not send cv's. Much harder to say no face to face or on the phone.

My sons' school had a pre arranged list of local employers willing to take part, worth asking yours if they do the same, maybe?

What happens if they don't do/can't find any work experience - do they have to go to school?

I understood with our school that if the kids had been unable to find work experience the school would sort something out. Not sure what though.

My DS arranged both his Yr 10 and Yr 12 work experience placements himself - although we assisted with identifying potential places and gave advice re content of e-mails and what to say on the phone. Both placements were 1 week long though - 2 days seems fairly pointless - too much paperwork for the employers for such a short time.

calico I don't agree that 15 is too young to make these calls. It gives them a reason to engage in the real world. DS has ASD and communication is not his strong point but he managed to do this himself - with the right guidance. Just making the arrangements was a great learning experience for him. He had to endure rejections and lack of responses just as he will when he is applying for jobs.

I posted on another thread about WE that ds was doing his Saturday job (gained through his work experience!) and in came a posh father with son in tow. The father started demanding to know what the company could offer his ds, what he would be doing exactly, and what were the procedures for ensuring his ds got a proper lunch every day. The manager made a special note afterwards that that boy's application would be filed under bin.

Ds wrote about 20 applications for WE. About three replied. So rude. How long does it take to send a one-line email saying sorry, no thanks, but I suppose some places are inundated and, like NapoleonsRose's area, lots of schools do WE at the same time. Many places use Health and Safety as an excuse, or client confidentiality, and most of ds's friends found it difficult to find a placement where they were actually doing something rather than just shadowing.

DD1 has just finished two weeks of work experience. I am also furrin, so not much experience of this. In our time, only the DCs who were sitting no exams got sent on work experience!

Anyway. Her year seems to have been split fairly evenly between DCs going to work with one of their parents; DCs going to small local businesses; and those who went back to their old primary schools/playgroups/nurseries and "worked" there for the week.

Conclusion at the end of the two weeks is that it is a 50/50 spilt between those who had a brilliant time, and those who hated every minute (myriad reasons).

I must say though that the best part of work experience in terms of actually gaining experience is those things such as having to get somewhere on time every day that is not school, working out a route, dealing with adults and members of the public and comporting oneself in a seemly fashion. Those pupils who had "formal" placements with big companies where they just moved around departments for two weeks or did some sort of project, got less out of the experience I think than the ones who were doing on the face of it less glamorous jobs.

I agree with Brenda - at this age, the actual work is just a bonus if it is in some way interesting or related to what the dc want to do later in life. This is all about them communicating with adults in the workplace (and sometimes with members of the public). It's about them finding their way to the workplace - probably a different form of travel. It's about them being on time and dressed appropriately. It's about them understanding there are actually a lot of menial tasks in most jobs and that, by getting on with them with good grace usually gives you a much better chance of someone taking the time to help you do something more interesting, etc,etc.
Writing the initial e-mail or visiting a small business or making a phone call in the first place is very much part of what they are there to learn, IMO.

All 3 of our DDs did a weeks work experience in year 10, I did help a bit by looking into some stuff for them nit the school gave a list of places and also said the students could find their own place but had to tell the school exactly where and what they were doing. The student had to contact the places themselves to confirm placement