Promoting social mobility: The importance of offering paid work experience
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We’re delighted to host this guest blog by Ella Blakesley, Senior Social Impact Manager at Ashurst. She discusses the importance of offering paid work experience, drawing on insights gained from the Access Ashurst programme for Year 12 students.
Work experience or work shadowing provides school-aged students with the opportunity to gain a real-life insight into an industry to help them decide if they wish to pursue it as a long-term profession. It's invaluable experience but difficult to secure and more often than not unpaid.
At Ashurst we recently made the decision to pay our Access Ashurst(*) students the London Living Wage for their two-week legal work experience placement in our London office. Listening to the personal struggles of the students, who historically would be completing work experience and then working part-time jobs in the evenings, was something that concerned me greatly and inevitably meant that many of our students were tired when completing their work experience with us, putting them at a disadvantage. Paying our students allows our students to focus on their placement. The salary gives them a real sense of pride and for many contributes towards their family income.
“The paid work experience at Ashurst impacted me hugely. I was able to work with professionals in the industry that I hope to be a part of in the future. Being paid for this experience helped me loads and without this support I would not have been able to accept the offer.”
”Having the opportunity to do paid work experience at Ashurst made the Access Ashurst programme significantly more accessible to me. I work a part-time job as a sales assistant and I would have had to consider whether I could afford to miss out on additional hours at work if the placement was unpaid”
For organisations running work experience programmes, especially those targeted at students from low socio-economic backgrounds, I encourage you to consider paying your students for their placements. Work experience has the potential to make a real difference to the lives of young people; however unpaid work experience, poses a challenge to those from low socio-economic backgrounds who often cannot afford to give up paid part-time/holiday work.
Please feel free to reach out to me via email or a member of the Causeway Education team to discuss introducing paid work experience for secondary school/sixth form students at your organisation.
*Access Ashurst programme: Access Ashurst offers paid skills workshops, mentoring and law work experience in London for Year 12 students to learn more about a career in law. The programme targets students from low socio-economic backgrounds.
