Skills Route: helping young people make better informed decisions about what to study after GCSEs

How did you decide what to study in your final years of school?
Perhaps you picked the subjects taught by your favourite teachers; maybe you picked the subjects that came most easily to you or you might even have had a clear career or study goal which you were working backwards from.

Let’s take this a little further, cast your mind back to when you were 16. Your hormones were probably raging and if you were anything like me, you were more interested in sport, shopping and socialising than in serious study decisions. Nonetheless, the choices that you make at the age of 15 and 16 about what to study in sixth form set the stage for many future opportunities. That is not to say you can’t change track later in life but for many, the choice between sciences and arts or humanities and sport is the first decision on the road to a salaried job and/or university.

So who or what helped you with this decision?
There might have been a trusted careers advisor in school, a psychometric test, some work experience or a recommendation from a family friend that was central to your decisions – but was there any hard data? There is a substantial community of great careers advisors in the UK and all those practitioners offering careers support are encouraged to provide insights into local labour market intelligence (amongst other things). To help them with this work, there is a growing market of data-driven tools designed to help young people to select the right courses at the right University or Apprenticeship to match their interests.

And what about children in the 21st Century?
My colleagues at Mime Consulting and I have developed Skills Route to help young people make informed decisions about what to study after GCSEs to ensure their long term goals are not compromised. Our tools equip users with the data that can help inform their decision making, particularly when used in combination with face to face careers advice and support. Skills Route brings together data about all the available options into one place and suggests relevant courses, subjects and institutions based on open data sources and information provided by the user.

We will soon release three new, free web-based tools to help 14-16 year old students consider all the options and make better informed decisions about what to study after their GCSEs. 

• Skills Route EXPLORE - so you can see how the choices you make in school impact your future
• Skills Route PLAN - to help you learn about and plan the best possible combination of courses and subjects for study after GCSEs
• Skills Route FIND - enabling you to locate local schools and colleges that offer the courses you want to study

If you would like to be amongst the first teachers, careers advisers, parents and young people to use these tools, please get in touch: briony.phillips@skillsroute.com