Impact Review 2020-2021

Careers Education across the UK faced continued upheaval in 2020/2021 as educators had to deal with a background of ever-changing rules on how to deliver education during the pandemic. As a result, the focus on careers education was often dropped - leaving young people with either severely reduced or no access to the necessary insights and role models they need to help set them on their path to success.

At Founders4Schools, we are truly dedicated to supporting industry to engage with young people, to inspire and share insights into careers and the skills required to succeed. We are also passionate about supporting young people to gain the necessary understanding of the world of work to make informed choices about their career pathway and help them overcome unconscious and conscious biases and self-limiting beliefs. To support educators in providing meaningful career education, and enable businesses to continue to inspire young people, we are proud to say that in 2020/21 we have taken the opportunity to expand our digital services, offering nationwide virtual role mode encounter that enabled us to deliver over 83,000 Student - Employer role model - Encounters, reaching young people in new areas in which we have previously not been able to engage due to geographical constraints.

We strengthened our focus on delivering digital skills, equity in STEM, careers in sustainability and signposting education pathways, to address the greatest needs of all. Our Maths4Girls programme has made enormous progress and we were able to scale it in spite of the pandemic meaning that we worked with over 50,000 students across all our programmes. The Covid-19 pandemic has had an unexpected outcome – it has made us stronger by allowing us to work with partners and educators we may otherwise not have reached.

Our mission to prepare young people for the future world of work relies on the support, dedication and enthusiasm of many people. I would like to extend my wholehearted appreciation to the many individuals and organisations who work with us to fund our services; to the educators who use our services to ensure young people are receiving inspiring education about the world of work; to the business role models who generously provide their hard work and time to be available to students; to the wonderful team at F4S and to our Trustees and Advisors, whose guidance and advice has supported us through this year and we look forward to working with you all in the coming year.