“I am starting to believe in myself” – what the Beyond Horizons pilot has taught us about the future of work experience.
As schools and employers respond to growing expectations around modern work experience, the EY Foundation’s Beyond Horizons pilot is testing what meaningful experiences of work can look like for younger students. Delivered across four schools in Bradford and engaging more than 100 Year 8 students, the programme is beginning to highlight three lessons: work experience should start earlier, it should be broader than a one-off placement, and stronger local coordination matters. While evaluation is ongoing, these early findings offer useful insights for educators, employers and policymakers seeking to expand access to opportunity.
As National Work Experience Month encourages discussion about how we prepare young people for their future, these questions feel particularly timely. The government’s updated careers guidance places greater emphasis on modern work experience and helping young people access opportunities to engage with employers and workplaces, generating renewed interest in what effective practice looks like.
Beyond Horizons was developed through co-design with schools, employers, local partners, parents and young people to explore this challenge. The programme builds on evidence from Groundswell Innovation that access to meaningful experiences of work remains uneven, and that earlier career-related learning and employer engagement can help ensure opportunities are shaped by a young person’s potential rather than their networks.
These lessons provide an early indication of what modern work experience could look like in practice.
1. Work experience should start before young people need it
Young people begin forming assumptions about themselves, their future and the world of work long before key education decisions are made, yet opportunities to engage with employers and workplaces are often concentrated later in secondary school.
Through Beyond Horizons, students were encouraged to explore their strengths, understand local opportunities and connect their interests to future possibilities. Rather than focusing solely on jobs, the programme created space for self-reflection, confidence-building and exploration. This reflects wider learning from EY Foundation’s s research with the Institute for the Future of Work on intrinsic motivation, which explores how helping young people understand their strengths, interests and motivations can support more confident and informed decisions about their futures.
Early pilot findings suggest this approach has value. Three in four young people indicated progress in their understanding of general and local labour market information, while two in three reported development in areas such as confidence, motivation towards future goals and identifying support needs.
For many young people, these shifts may seem small. But they matter.
“I am starting to believe in myself.”
“It helped me understand things better, and showed me I have a wide range of opportunities.”
This is particularly relevant given the growing focus on modern work experience within statutory careers guidance, which encourages schools to provide meaningful workplace experiences throughout Key Stage 3 and 4. By engaging young people at ages 12 – 13, Beyond Horizons is testing an approach that supports career exploration before key decisions are made, helping work experience become part of a longer developmental journey rather than a single event.
2. Work experience is more than a one-off placement
Traditional placements remain an important part of careers education. However, one of the clearest lessons from the pilot is that meaningful experiences of work can take many forms – from employer encounters, workplace challenges, industry insights and more.
Beyond Horizons combined strengths-based learning, local labour market insight, employer encounters and immersive workplace challenges to help young people understand not only what different jobs are, but why they matter to the local area, and what skills they require.
Employers contributed through career stories, workplace challenges and discussions about their own journeys. These activities created opportunities for young people to engage directly with the world of work while also providing more accessible ways for employers to get involved.
This was particularly valuable for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), who often want to support young people but often do not have the capacity to offer traditional work experience placements. This aligns with findings from EY Foundation and Demos’ The Opportunity Effect research, which highlights the important role businesses of all sizes can play in improving social mobility when engagement opportunities are practical, flexible and achievable. As one employer volunteer from a local Ed-Tech business reflected:
“When I think of work experience, I think of KS4 and upwards. I hadn’t really thought about it at KS3. EY Foundation has opened my eyes to this.”
Broadening our understanding of work experience can open the door to more employers, more role models and more opportunities for young people, while creating flexible ways for organisations of all sizes to contribute.
3. Coordination matters
The challenge around delivering work experience is rarely a lack of goodwill. More often, it is helping schools, employers and delivery partners connect their efforts in a way that is consistent, meaningful and most importantly, sustainable.
Teachers responded positively to the programme structure and its ability to bring together different elements of careers education into a coherent journey. However, feedback also highlighted an ongoing challenge across the sector: while schools want meaningful employer engagement and employers want to support young people, making those connections happen consistently can be difficult when time, capacity and networks vary.
Through Beyond Horizons, schools, employers and local partners came together around a shared goal. The pilot has provided early examples of how stronger local coordination can help create opportunities that are more visible, more consistent and less reliant on informal networks alone.
Improving work experience, therefore, is not only about creating innovative activities. It is also about creating conditions that allow those activities to flourish.
“Our young people deserve this. Young people need to be shown what opportunities are out there, and schools are key to providing that inspiration – they need to step outside of their school environment and gain new experiences. Then maybe, from going to a college in Bradford, they might want to go to university and, step by step, it builds their confidence.”
Isra Husain, Employer Liaison and Work Experience Lead (and host of Beyond Horizons Immersive Workplace Experience Day), New College Bradford
Looking ahead
Beyond Horizons remains a pilot, and there is still more to learn.
However, these early reflections raise important questions for employers, educators, policymakers and local partners:
• How can we help young people to access opportunities earlier?
• How can employers contribute in meaningful and achievable ways?
• How can local systems enable access to equal opportunities?
As National Work Experience Month and National Employability Week bring attention to these issues, we believe there is significant value in continuing to test, share and learn from new approaches. As schools begin to respond to updated careers guidance and the wider ambition for modern work experience, there is an opportunity to build evidence about what works, for whom and in what contexts.
Because if every young person deserves access to meaningful experiences of work, the challenge is not simply to provide more opportunities. It is to create experiences that are meaningful, equitable and connected to young people’s interests, strengths and future aspirations. In doing so, we can help ensure that opportunity is shaped by potential rather than existing networks.
Get involved
Whether you’re an employer looking for new ways to engage with young people, an educator exploring innovative approaches to careers education, or a local organisation interested in strengthening pathways into work, we would welcome the opportunity to share learning and continue the conversation.
By working together, we can help create a future where meaningful experiences of work are shaped by a young person’s potential – not by who they know.
Point of contact: Dulcie Hayden, Bradford Programme Manager, EY Foundation
