Alumni engagement: a cost effective way to meet your statutory requirements
The keenly awaited Statutory guidance: Careers guidance and access for education and training providers was published by the Department for Education on 8 May 2025.
At Future First we were pleased to see a clear focus on alumni engagement as a key route to an engaging, compliant careers programme. Read on for our take on how harnessing your alumni community will enable you to meet the new statutory requirements, particularly the 2 weeks’ worth of work experience, without significant financial outlay.
The DfE statutory guidance sets out clear areas where alumni engagement could be a great way for your school to meet the requirements:
1. Careers programmes should showcase a diverse range of role models and make use of alumni
Your alumni community won’t represent every sector out there but it’s very likely that a “diverse range of role models” will be found among them. You can then make targeted approaches to other local or national employers to fill in the gaps.
2. Careers programmes should tackle assumptions and misconceptions about what the next steps should be for students across all backgrounds
Invite back your recent alumni to talk about the first steps they took out into the world beyond your institution to show all students, including those with SEND and from disadvantaged backgrounds, people like them who have gone on to achieve success.
3. Learners should encounter a variety of employers, employees and the self-employed
It could be challenging to source self-employed people through traditional employer engagement, but your alumni network is sure to include a few entrepreneurs who would be keen to share their story.
4. From September 2025, schools should be planning for 2 weeks' worth of work experience activities across Years 7-11
This could sound overwhelming, but it’s crucial to understand that no one is suggesting that Year 7 should be spending a week on work experience. This new government goal is deliberately flexible and designed to be a staged learning process, read more here. Here’s an example of how alumni could support you to achieve it:
Want to find out more about using your alumni to meet Gatsby Benchmarks?
Join us between 1st and 4th July for for a week of webinars and workshops that will help you amplify the power of your alumni network to improve your careers provision, meet Gatsby Benchmarks and boost social mobility.
We have a programme packed with practical information, top tips and creative ideas to help you build a thriving and engaged alumni and employee volunteers network.
