• Work Awareness - guests from world of work visit the classroom to answer student questions about their experience of work
• Work Preparation - business ambassadors support school assemblies and workshops, preparing students for Work Experience, and employers mentor student pairs in 'Equal Choices' work shadowing
• Work Experience - employers supervise student work placements, usually for 10 days
• Enterprise Challenges - business ambassadors lead student group sessions to develop enterprise skills
• Post-16 Options - employers support apprenticeships, Diplomas, A-levels and other further education qualifications with placements and curriculum enrichment activities; also part-time work.
• Reading & Number Partners - mentors from world of work visit primary schools as mentors to read or play number games with children in their lunch hour
• Alternative Education - employers provide full range of employability activities and support for students in Personal Education Centre; iPEC

Activities Table
All our activities are planned to develop positive attitude.  All our business partners are carefully selected, briefed and monitored.  Our quality assurance comes from the National EBP Network accreditation.

What we do 

Countec EBP helps make work-related learning happen by working in partnership with schools, college, employers and work-based learning providers to raise awareness and provide, arrange and support work-related learning activities, and offer a range of services.

 We will:

• help employers get involved in work-related learning – in places and in ways that are right for the employer;
• establish and maintain partnerships between employers, schools, colleges and work-based learning providers – matching needs, interests, aspirations and opportunities;
• maintain a database of employers and work-based learning providers and the work-related learning opportunities they are able to provide
• arrange and broker work-related learning activities
• vet, train and brief volunteer mentors from local businesses;
• carry out health and safety checks and ensure that other legal requirements are met, including insurance;
• provide facilities – on-line where possible  – to make it easier for schools and colleges to find employers to work with them;
• monitor and evaluate work-related learning schemes to identify the impact they are having and to improve and maintain their quality, and
•  use our expertise to simplify matters for employers, schools and colleges and providing them with short-cuts to finding solutions – for example, in relation to health and safety, child protection and CRB checks.

 How we help 

By providing high quality products and services which help our key customers – schools, MK College and employers – to gain maximum benefit from their work-related learning activities. 

We help schools and MK College by:

• providing single point of contact brokerage services on behalf of schools and college
• encouraging employers to work r schools and colleges by promoting the business benefits; and schools and colleges to work with employers by promoting the benefits to learners, to the teaching workforce and to education more widely.
• exploring the scope for obtaining economies of scale – for example, work experience materials such as student diaries might be produced more cost-effectively across an area rather than by each school or college acting independently.
• stimulating them to consider new ideas and programmes.
• sharing best practice.

We help employers by:

• reducing and removing barriers which discourage employers from taking part or extending their involvement in work-related learning.
• meeting with employers to help them to:
• identify and evaluate the benefits they could gain by involving themselves in work-related learning, and
• considering – or reconsidering – their cost-benefit equation. This is particularly important for smaller employers who may be discouraged from getting involved in work-related learning because they perceive, incorrectly, that the costs will inevitably outweigh the benefits.
• providing a single point of contact and minimising multiple calls from different institutions.
• minimising bureaucracy;
• guiding employers who, although very familiar with their responsibilities for the health and safety of their own employees and members of the public, may be wary of the health and safety, child protection and insurance implications associated with work-related  learning for young people.
• stimulating them to consider new ideas and programmes.
• sharing best practice.