KIDS are set to be told from primary school age how to get into work to avoid a life on benefits.
tsar will call on Ministers to give kids early exposure to different careers to broaden their horizons and help end the youth inactivity crisis.
The recommendation to introduce mandatory work experience with dedicated curriculum time will be in his landmark
Mr Milburn fears that teaching youngsters about the workplace and providing hands-on experience has been an “afterthought” and the changes will help make them “work ready”.
The former Health Secretary spoke to The Sun as he visited Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury, west Yorkshire, where Channel 4’s Educating Yorkshire was based.
He said: “Just familiarising kids in primary school, maybe not from as young as four, but just familiarising them with what work means, what the possibilities are.
“Because all too often, children are growing up with a very narrow view about what the possibilities are for them.”
He added: “Particularly if they come from a poorer background.
“And partially, this is about getting employers in to primary and just beginning to lay the trail of breadcrumbs.
“So that youngsters are getting a sense about, ‘I could be doing this rather than that, I could be being a nurse, but I could be being a doctor.
Yeah, I could be thinking about going into veterinary medicine’.
He added: “I don’t think you want to be heavy-handed about it, but you do just want to begin to give youngsters a real sense of what they might be.”
Mr Milburn insisted he had “buy-in” from both and in solving the Neets issue which sees one million 16-24 year olds not in education, or training.
He added that parents fearful of their children missing lessons should see it as an “investment” in their futures.
His proposals in his report that could be out within weeks include experience of work starting at the beginning of primary school.
Then in the first three years of secondary school pupils should have meaningful experience with employers.
When pupils are 14-16 years-old they should have a traditional work placement and be given employer feedback.
Mr Milburn added that the work experience can be part of the solution to get them away from and the first step into work.
He said: “But for most youngsters, surely we can’t be ruining their life chances and saying, “Oh, it’s ok to be on benefits.
“We want youngsters to be in work, and by the way, they want to be in work.
“We know that eight and 10 young people who are , they want to be working or they want to be training.
“And we’ve just got to make that possible. And this is part of the way that we do that by making sure that work experience is embedded in the curriculum. It’s not like an afterthought.”
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza who was also on the visit said: “I’ve heard from children all over the county – they are ambitious, they want to do well and they want good jobs.
“The buzzy students at Thornhill Community Academy are no different.
“If we are serious about helping more young people into work, we must give them the advice, guidance and, vitally, the work experience to help them achieve their ambitions.”
