Three Year 10 pupils say work experience changed their outlook

Kelsey, Maddison and Azhe, three 15-year-olds, said one week in the world of work changed how they saw their futures. In Sheffield, Meadowhead School said its Year 10 pupils spent a week on workplace experience from 6-10 July 2026, part of a wider run of employer encounters built into school careers education.

Meadowhead says the point is to give students an insight into what work is like and what they need to be successful in the workplace. Sheffield Futures sets out a similar case, saying work experience can show young people what a job or sector is really like, teach them what employers expect, add something to a CV and help them gain a reference from an employer.

Those details matter because a week in work is not equal for every pupil. For some teenagers, it can be the first time they have sat inside a workplace, watched adults operate under deadlines and seen how a job feels beyond a classroom description. For others, it can be a chance to deepen family connections to a profession or firm up an interest already shaped by school support and local employer links.

The wider push around placements shows how closely work experience is tied to opportunity. Careers Wales has pledged to give all state school teenagers access to work experience, while the government launched a fresh effort to get young people onto placements, with 30 companies including Marks and Spencer creating opportunities. The BBC itself has said it invites more than 1,000 people each year to take part in work experience.

That focus on access has also been linked to social mobility inside the BBC. In a 2015 submission to the Select Committee on Social Mobility, the broadcaster said it wanted to seek out talent from the broadest range of backgrounds because heavy reliance on graduate recruitment had historically acted as a barrier to entry for people from less advantaged backgrounds.

A separate BBC case study also described an 18-year-old who said work experience widened his comfort zone and prepared him for the world of work. For Year 10 pupils like Kelsey, Maddison and Azhe, that shift can come in a single week, when a placement stops being a school requirement and starts looking like a first step.