It's been an action packed year!
For us, like everyone in education, it’s been a rollercoaster year. But against a challenging backdrop, huge inroads have been made thanks to everyone’s resilience, determination and positivity…
We’re enormously grateful to all of our community partners and to the schools, sixth form colleges, FECs and universities we’ve worked with throughout the year. Working in collaboration with them we’ve been able to:
- Reach and help more students than ever before: This year we’ve supported 32,897 students across Sussex, helping open their eyes to the wealth of options open to them, and providing them with the knowledge, insight and inspiration to think creatively, ambitiously and practically about their futures. We’ve done this by working directly with our education partners, by funding a number of in-college members of staff to support students, and by providing local schools with a wide range of free resources and events to inspire students and staff.
- Extend the reach of our programmes: This year saw the extension of our popular Get Career Confident Programme into East Sussex. Get Career Confident offers young people and their parents and carers free careers inspiration, advice and guidance. This extension of our programme means that this year we have worked with 2434 learners across Sussex through GCC, with over 1160 of them benefitting from valuable 1:1 guidance.
- Consolidate on the success of new event formats: 2021 saw us team up with over 50 educational providers, employers and training and apprenticeship providers to deliver our second virtual What Next Sussex event. The event built on the success of the first event which saw over 10,000 logons. This year, new chat rooms proved a big hit with learners, enabling them to have smaller group interactions with employers, careers guidance counsellors and university representatives.
- Launch Learning4LifeSussex: 2021 also saw the launch of a brand new outreach resource for Sussex. Whether you’re still at school, about to leave education, returning to work, or supporting someone considering their options this new site provides an invaluable shop front taking you directly to the best information and advice to help you.
- Develop exciting new resources: 2021 has seen a whole suite of exciting new resources made freely available to state schools across Sussex. This has included the new Pay Index, which enables students to chart out the employability and salary prospects of different careers options as well as our new creativity resources developed with Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne (see Snapshot Story One). New workbooks have also been added to our suite of ‘life issues’ Role Models resources.
Sarah Williams Director of SLN comments: 'There's no doubt that for a host of reasons, 2021 has been a tough year, but it's also been an inspiring one. It’s proven that even in the toughest environments, our partners are more determined than ever to keep collaborating to ensure exciting new opportunities for young people are being made available.
'It is wonderful to finish the year knowing that together we have supported tens of thousands of young people through challenging times and helped inspire them to shape their futures. Here’s to 2022 and continuing to collectively build on this positive Sussex success story.'