Effective ways to engage with local businesses

Schools and colleges have the duty to drive forward independent and impartial careers guidance, yet they cannot achieve this alone. While they have the freedom and scope to personalise it to meet the needs of individual young people, with this freedom comes the responsibility of ensuring that they are well informed about roles and jobs available in today’s business market, and have access to a breadth of opportunities.

In London, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent 99.8 per cent of businesses, while in the South East they represent 99.6 per cent (London Enterprise Panel, 2013). However, often SME partnerships are a missed opportunity when developing careers provision and the opportunities for young people to have a stake in, contribute to and benefit from this sector of the economy could be better.