A real gem

It’s the middle of a Friday afternoon and eight students from Bradford’s Tong High School are engaged in an animated classroom discussion about how to survive after being shipwrecked on a desert island.

They’ve been given a list of items - some practical, some not-so - and told they can pick five that they must be able to fit into a small rucksack to help them cope with their new surroundings. The conversation veers between the practical and the fatalistic.

‘We’re going to die anyway,’ one reasons. ‘We might as well go short-term. Put the beer and cider in.’

Encouraged to think about their choices by the teaching staff, the students settle on some slightly more practical choices. Ultimately, the teenagers want to maximise their chances of escape. And it turns out that the exercise is really a way into a discussion about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - a theory that describes the pattern of human motivation, with basic physiological needs such as breathing and food at the bottom and morality, creativity and problem solving (or ‘self-actualisation’) at the top.

While this might sound like typical classroom fare, this is far from your typical classroom. For a start, today’s tutors are from Bradford-based social landlord Incommunities. And the session is taking place not at the students’ usual Tong High School base but at the rather grand surroundings of Bradford University’s school of management.

Pathway to employment
So why is a social landlord helping to teach a group of sixth formers? And what do both sides hope to get out of the arrangement?

The students are in fact part of a brand new pilot scheme to teach students from schools and colleges about housing. The eight young people here today are part of a one-year study programme, involving both classroom-based learning and work shadowing. This will be followed by work placements in year two.

The scheme, known as the Junior GEM programme, was designed by Incommunities and learning and development organisation Centre for Partnership, to provide a pathway into management careers in the sector.

The students take part alongside their existing A-level studies and should emerge at the end with a Chartered Institute of Housing level 3 qualification. This doesn’t involve additional examinations for the students, however, as they are assessed by classroom-based tasks and coursework.

Trude Feiweles, associate headteacher at Tong High School, said the school had been keen to help create a pilot programme from the moment it first heard about the idea.

‘Part of our agenda at the school is around employability,’ she states. ‘Our philosophy is that it is not about the qualifications if they are not going to lead you into employment. We wanted to look at different styles of pathway for young people.’

Ms Feiweles says the school treats the qualification ‘like a fourth A-level’ for the students taking part. ‘For us the CIH qualification is a lovely extra but it doesn’t narrow the future work of the young person,’ she says, before adding that it might, however, ‘persuade’ them to consider a career in the sector. And the ‘vastness’ of 21,500-home Incommunities - in terms of the types of job functions it offers - is also an attraction for a school focused on creating employment options. ‘It could lead you to lots of things,’ she adds.

For Incommunities, the programme is part of its concept of creating a ‘university of work’ - offering opportunities for six-formers, graduates and existing staff to develop or expand their careers in the housing sector. Two other schools in the Bradford area now want to take part and there have also been expressions of interest from schools in south Yorkshire and London. It is not a loss-making enterprise - sixth form schools and colleges have a per capita allowance for students, and this is used to fund the Junior GEMs.

As part of its commitment to creating jobs and training, Incommunities has this week signed up to Inside Housing’s Homes Work campaign - to create more apprenticeship and training opportunities in the housing and construction sectors.

Contact details for people wishing to find out more about training opportunities with Incommunities’ established Graduate Employment Mentoring programme (hence the GEM monicker) - a national paid internship programme that started in 2009 to develop the careers of unemployed graduates and has since helped 73 graduates into employment - will be placed on Inside Housing’s website this week.

This marks the first part of the campaign’s aim to create a web resource that schools, colleges and individuals can use to find out about training opportunities offered by UK housing providers.

GEM students study for the Chartered Institute of Housing’s level 4 professional qualification, and are paid a minimum of £6.31 an hour by their employer.

Geraldine Howley, chief executive of Incommunities, says the Junior GEM programme will help equip the students to become the ‘leaders of the future’.

The idea for the scheme partly emerged from a conversation with Tong’s headteacher Stephen Curran.

‘He said Incommunities was always approaching it and asking if its pupils want to be apprentices,’ Ms Howley states. ‘He said “I want to stretch the students”. We brought him into the office and set out the concept of the Junior GEMs.’

Debt-free qualifications
Trevor Smith, director of the Centre for Partnership, adds that the idea is to create an ‘escalator of qualifications’ that the Junior GEMs - and indeed those on the main GEM programme - take part in. The advantage for the students is ending up with debt-free qualifications and a tried and tested route into the job market. The advantage for social landlords is that they end up with highly-trained staff with an eye on the management positions of the future.

Eighty-five percent of all graduates of the main GEM programme are in work - with 100 per cent of the 2011/12 cohort winning contracts with their internship providers after taking part.

‘Geraldine and I had sat down at the beginning of 2013 and started to come up with the notion of the Incommunities University of Work and the debt-free degree,’ he states. ‘We became a CIH-centre in 2012 [with the GEM programme] and Geraldine and I were planning what else we could do.’

The tutors on the course have the added benefit of being existing GEM graduates - so they know exactly how today’s Junior GEMs feel. Today’s lesson is being held at the same time as one of six annual residential academies for the main GEM programme, which is taking place at the same location.

Thomas Sutton is one of the tutors and says the session on key work and life skills is just the start of a programme that will teach the Junior GEMs about allocations policies, the work of neighbourhood officers and work placements.

‘It’s going off the CIH level 3 structure and adapting it for younger people,’ he states.

Mr Sutton says the programme is important because housing has been ‘really bad at publicising itself as an [career] option’.

‘I don’t know anyone I was with at university [in Warwick] who has gone on to work in housing,’ he states. ‘When you’re at uni, housing is never really on the agenda. You go to the careers service and it is not there as an option.’

After taking part in the GEMs programme he landed a job as welfare reform office at Incommunities. ‘I’ve got a professional qualification and a permanent job,’ he adds. Teaching the Junior GEMs ‘requires a lot of time and planning’ he adds ‘but we [the tutors] have taken the view that it’s a good project to be part of’.

Career options
The programme also helps spread awareness of what the housing profession is and the variety of roles on offer at housing providers, he says. The Junior GEMs here today agree the programme has opened their minds to the possibilities of a career in housing already.

Kane Hogan says he now realises how many different roles are available with housing providers and that it might offer a career he would consider. It also offers other opportunities - this weekend some of the Junior GEMs meet housing minister Kris Hopkins who turns up to talk to those attending the residential academy.

Back in the lesson, Mr Sutton asks the group how they would prioritise their time in a day in which they had an exam, a birthday present they needed to buy and a friend doing something interesting at night that they wanted to be part of.

‘What’s the interesting thing at night?’ one student immediately responds, demonstrating that today’s intake have the ruthless time management skills needed by the housing bosses of tomorrow.