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Employer-led learning
Solutions · Inspire
Your brand is invisible in the schools where it matters most.
60% of UK secondary schools never see a careers session from a recognisable employer in a typical year. The talent in those schools forms its picture of “jobs I might do” without you in it. Five years later, you wonder why your candidate pool looks so familiar. Schools Engagement fixes that — and does it where it counts.
The cost of not being there
Your D&I numbers start in year 9.
Most early-careers attraction effort lands at age 18–19 — UCAS, university milkrounds, the careers fair circuit. That’s the moment you’re trying to influence a decision the candidate already made when they chose GCSE options.
If you weren’t a visible brand at year 9, you’re competing for the candidates who were already going to your sector. The pool you draw from looks like the pool you drew from last year, and the year before, and the year before that.
Partner schools
800+
UK secondaries and FE colleges in the active TTP partner network.
Opportunity-area schools
220+
DfE-designated opportunity-area or low-progression-postcode schools.
University partners
38
Including 16 Russell Group, with active outreach partnerships and progression tracking.
Education charities
12
Joint programmes with Causeway, RAEng, Founders4Schools and others.
If you don't fix this
You’re hiring from a slice of the country — and paying premium for the privilege.
The cost of a narrow-pool strategy is hidden but high. Cost-per-acquisition rises year on year because everyone else in your sector is bidding for the same identifiable talent pool. D&I numbers don’t move because the schools that produce diverse candidates aren’t in your engagement footprint. And the reputation cost — being the employer young people don’t encounter in school — compounds in ways your brand-tracker survey rarely catches.
Most school careers programmes are ten years behind the labour market. We don’t run those.
Schools Engagement is run by Tom Reeves and a team that came from in-house outreach roles in UK Russell Group universities. The 800-school partner network is filtered — we don’t accept every school that asks, and we don’t deploy generic content. Programmes are designed against your competency frameworks and your sector’s real working life. The output is a measurable engagement-to-application progression metric, tracked over three years per cohort.
What students experience
Classroom engagement that feels practical, not promotional.
The strongest schools programmes look like learning, discussion and applied problem solving. Employer brand earns attention when students can see the work, try the thinking and connect it to real routes after school.
Small-group work
Structured tasks create participation beyond the confident few.
STEM in context
Hands-on activity turns sectors into something visible and testable.
Guided discussion
Students connect skills, routes and employers through conversation.
How we deliver this
Six things that make schools engagement actually work.
Most employer schools-engagement is a one-off careers talk and a handout. It is theatre. The list below is what’s in every TTP programme — structural commitments, not optional extras.
Featured · Royal Academy of Engineers
Case study · Three-year longitudinal programme
RAE: 4 schools to 40, with measured progression at every stage.
The Royal Academy of Engineers’ partnership with TTP started in 2023 with four pilot schools and a question: could a sustained, measured programme actually move engineering progression at scale? Three years on, the programme is in 40 partner schools, the first cohort has progressed to engineering apprenticeships and degrees, and the engagement-to-progression metric outperformed the engineering sector benchmark by 38 percentage points.
4 → 40
Schools, in 3 years
+38pp
Vs sector benchmark
1st
Cohort in employment
What this connects to
Schools Engagement only works as a connected programme.
On its own, Schools Engagement reaches young people, builds brand, and contributes to social mobility outcomes — all genuinely valuable. But its commercial leverage comes from feeding the rest of the early-careers pipeline.
The behavioural signals captured during IWX (which is distributed via the Schools Engagement network) feed downstream Assessment Platform scoring at point of application. That’s why the schools work pays for itself in hire quality five years later, not just in brand metrics.
Sister solution
Immersive Work Experience
The content engine that runs through the Schools Engagement network.
Distribution platform
TalentXP
The platform that hosts IWX content delivered via Schools Engagement.
Downstream
Apprenticeship Recruitment
Where Schools-engaged candidates progress at age 16+ for L2/L3 routes.
Programme lead
Tom Reeves
Director of Schools & Early Engagement, ex-Russell Group outreach lead.
Schools programmes running for
RAEng
DHL
Channel 4
Schneider Electric
Microsoft
PwC
John Lewis
National Grid
Talk to the schools team
Got a D&I number that won’t move?
Most clients start with a 60-minute audit call: we walk through where your current attraction footprint is, where it isn’t, and which of our partner schools would extend it most usefully. No commitment; you walk away with a region-by-region map you can share with your team.