The Black Country Skills Factory supported by The Careers and Enterprise Company engage with all Black Country secondary schools, special schools and colleges with the aim to help all young people prepare for life after education. They have today 2nd November announced their launch of ‘Your Future Black Country’
Your Future Black Country has been created to ensure young people educated in special schools who do not sit traditional level 2 qualifications employers recognise can still gain access to labour market information relevant to their needs and abilities.
Every SEND student and their parents or carers should have access to good quality information about future study options and labour market opportunities . Your Future Black Country aims to offer this information in an accessible and easy format. The site features a number of different career paths young people can enter with no formal or minimal qualifications. Jobs can be filtered by entry requirements using a traffic light system: Green = no formal qualifications required; Amber = some qualifications may be required dependent upon employer and individual vacancy and; Red = formal qualifications are required. Careers and labour market information (LMI) can be hard to navigate especially for our pupils with SEND. This site will allow access to easily digestible information relating to accessible career pathways, skills needed for those jobs, employment sectors and salaries.
The site will be launched over 2 days. On the 2nd November it will be launched to all Black Country Enterprise Advisors. Enterprise Advisers are volunteers from businesses and the public sector, organisations of all sizes including the self-employed. Working alongside the Coordinators and directly with school and college leaders, they are responsible for helping schools and colleges build careers and enterprise and employer engagement plans drawing on their own local business networks. On the 10th November the site will be launched to Black Country Special schools, college foundation learning departments and SEND colleagues in the four local authorities: Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Feedback will be sourced from partners, schools and stakeholders to ensure the site is purposeful and meaningful for our young people with Special Educational needs and or disabilities.