New World New Skills: Helping South Wales’ secondary school students develop skills for their future
At PwC, we believe we have a collective responsibility to ensure everyone has the fundamental skills they need to succeed. Closing the skills gap is an essential part of making the UK fairer, more sustainable and stronger on the global stage, in turn leading to greater prosperity.
Our New World New Skills virtual school series is one initiative we have launched which seeks to address this - upskilling both our people and those in the wider community. It aims to support secondary school students in developing their skills for the future and maximising their potential in their chosen career path.
We’ve developed two programmes, aimed at different age groups, covering topics to help students develop key employability skills such as teamwork and problem solving. The learning materials have been designed for use by teachers and careers leaders in the classroom and include short pre-recorded videos as well as materials to assist with further learning on the topics covered. Each programme consists of six sessions, designed to be delivered over a period of six weeks.
As well as focusing on key employability skills such as teamwork and problem solving, we’ve also created a ‘Dragons’ Den’ version of the programme series which provides an opportunity for students to try out their entrepreneurial skills. In this programme, students are presented with a problem and encouraged to develop ideas to solve it, before presenting their pitch to their teacher and classmates.
Within South Wales, we have taken this programme one step further through our Five Schools Programme. Here we are working with five schools within the region providing students the skills we consider to be most valuable for their future. Students also gain an opportunity to visit PwC’s Cardiff office, present to our people and receive feedback and tips on their performance.
The schools we have partnered with are: Fitzalan High School; Aberdare Community School; Ysgol Gymraeg Bro Morgannwg; Cathays High School and Treorchy Comprehensive School.
“The need to upskill across ages, regions and professions has never been more urgent and we have a collective responsibility to ensure everyone has the fundamental skills they need to succeed. We’re very proud to have worked with the schools across South Wales and look forward to continuing to develop our partnerships. The programme provides meaningful guidance and support to school students as they look to embark on their futures as well as providing our own people with valuable upskilling opportunities and mentoring experience.”
For more details, visit the New World New Skills virtual school series webpage.
“My involvement through volunteering was facilitating a PwC Office visit for one of the five schools selected on the programme. We hosted 25 year 12 & 13 business studies students at the PwC Cardiff office for a skills session. Students would select a case study and have 90 minutes as a small team to form an appropriate response acting as PwC advisors and produce a presentation. The most rewarding aspect of the day was having a number of students feel comfortable enough to highlight that they had an interest in the early careers options which PwC offer to students and were keen to share that the day had inspired them.”
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