Early Careers

Building the bridge between Northumberland’s colleges, training providers and the employers who need their next generation of talent.

There’s a moment in every young person’s journey through Northumberland’s education system when a qualification must become a job. A T Level, an apprenticeship, a place at college: each one only means something if there’s a real, local employer on the other side of it, ready to take that person on. Too often in Northumberland, that’s exactly where things fall apart. Not because the talent isn’t there, and not because employers don’t want it, but because further education and employers simply aren’t talking to each other early enough, or often enough, to build something that works for both.

Connect Northumberland already helps primary school children discover the careers on their doorstep through Spark, and secondary pupils step inside real workplaces through Connect Inspires. Linking further education to employers is the next stage of that same story: building direct, lasting relationships between Northumberland’s colleges and training providers and the employer community we already convene, so a T Level or an apprenticeship becomes a known, trusted route into a local career, not a leap of faith.

With several of our employers we’re already partnered with the Northumberland Engineering Academy (New Engineering Academy Launches in Northumberland – Education Partnership North East), a groundbreaking 14-16 skills partnership. We will start to build the next part of the story this November, at People, Place, Potential, our Annual Employer Gathering to be hosted at the new Northumberland College Wansbeck campus.

Why this matters now

“The most effective skills interventions I have seen are deeply embedded in local economies, with strong relationships between providers, employers and the communities they serve.”
Phil Smith, Chair, Skills England

That’s exactly the gap we’re closing in Northumberland. The skills and training system is complicated, and it’s changing fast. There’s good practice already happening across the county, but many of the smaller businesses that make up most of Northumberland’s employer base simply don’t have the time, or the contacts, to find it. No college, council or single employer can fix that alone. So instead of waiting for someone else to join the dots, we’re bringing everyone into the same room.

Starting at People, Place, Potential

This next phase of work starts properly this November, at our People, Place, Potential event. It’s a full day for Northumberland employers, educators and young people to be honest about the talent pipeline we’re building in this county: what’s working, what isn’t, and what each of us is going to do differently.

NECA, the North East Combined Authority, is a core partner and will present the T Level and apprenticeship pipeline being built at a regional level, showing in real terms where Northumberland employers connect into it. It sits squarely within their commitments for the North East, including ending child poverty and building real opportunity for everyone in the region. People, Place, Potential is what those commitments look like in practice, here in Northumberland.

We’ll hear directly from young people coming through that system, from employers who’ve already committed to growing local talent, and from educators pioneering new ways of partnering with business. This isn’t a conference people sit through quietly. Everyone in the room leaves having made a public commitment to do something differently.

Get involved

If you’re a Northumberland employer who wants a real say in the talent pipeline your business depends on, or a college or training provider looking to build a stronger bridge into local employers, this is where it starts.
Get in touch with Zoe Maylam, Executive Director at zoe@connectnorthumberland.org to talk about getting involved as we make Northumberland a better place to live and work, today and tomorrow.