Why are more young people choosing History at A-Level? From filler to facilitator
Kojo Owoahene is the impressive, young and energetic Careers Leader (CL) at Ditton Park Academy near Slough, Berkshire. Kojo has been in the Careers Leader role for just a couple of years now and has overseen a significant rise in the school’s achievements within the Gatsby Benchmark framework.
What challenge did the school face and how was this identified?
The Senior Leadership team noticed an increase in the number of young people who were enrolling in History at A-Level. History and Geography had for some time been level pegging in terms of enrolment, but somehow history seemed to be taking a lead, and even more interestingly, many of the history enrolments were coming from one group: those who were being taught History by Kojo in previous years – curious!
So, a conversation ensued and Kojo thought he knew the source of the change. Whilst at University, Kojo had taken a Life Coach module and part of that had been helping some young people with their plans. This was his first evidence of the importance of careers information and advice for people, and it convinced him of the need to avoid “getting stuck”, to consider lots of different paths. This has fuelled his desire to continue helping young people similarly now.
What actions did you take to address this challenge?
Kojo officially has 1 hour per week allocated to the careers program, but as with many dedicated staff, spends more time than that making sure the program delivers for the young people at school. When talking to them about why they were choosing subjects for A-levels, he found that some were choosing “filler subjects”, without a strong sense of how they might help develop themselves.
Kojo used his knowledge of the CL role and resources to start to embed more careers related information into lessons and began to build an appreciation of history as less of a filler and more of a facilitator subject. Speaking of history in terms of the skills it develops and the career pathways that those skills enable. The analytical skills developed in history lessons were seen to play a key part of successful careers in law, politics, civil service, and a multitude of careers where research and communication skills were prized.
In addition to class interactions, Kojo also took the argument to Open Evenings, where parents could also be engaged in the conversation and equipped and encouraged to continue it back home. There were lots of questions from parents about “what is the point of history in the modern world” and it was gratifying to see the change in some as they engaged with the history department.
What were the outcomes of the actions you took?
The uptick in the number of young people taking history at A level was one of the more explicit outcomes, but Kojo also saw the bigger picture implications. “It helped me to see how the careers information and subject teaching are not separate, bringing my CL role into my teaching has really helped encourage young people to see the importance of the subject”. Kojo used the evidence from history to encourage other departments to consider a similar approach and embed more careers into the curriculum, which in turn helps the schools achieve more within the Gatsby Benchmark 4 area.
What are your next steps?
As careers leader, Kojo is looking forward to maintaining relationships with all departments across the school to help ensure they understand the benefits of embedding careers in the curriculum. There are lots of resources available to help do this for various subjects, so helping to make all aware of these, encourage them into use and then measure the differences the approach makes in different subjects will be great to see in the next year.
If you have any questions on how you too might drive this sort of change at your school, then please contact the Berkshire team at [email protected].
