SkillsBlox Advisors: Jemma Dobson

School: Orgill Primary School

“I got involved with Skillsblox through work at Morgan Sindall, as a mum of children 11 and 17 I felt that children aren’t told enough about what kind of jobs are out there for the taking nor what kind of quality’s they already own that can be transferrable to jobs.

Seeing the children’s enthusiasm when guests spoke about what jobs they did and what kind of other jobs they had in the past it really sparked an interest with in them and started all good kinds of conversations off, like what qualifications did they need to do that job? What’s good about the job etc..

I remember particularly working with a group of girls and asked them what they thought they were good at, 1 girl said she wasn’t good at anything. Then I asked them to writ down what each other were good at, when we reviewed them the girl who said she wasn’t good at anything was in fact to her peers- was a good friend, she was caring good at listening and problem solving and good at English! and when we did animal and me her scores showed her what animal she was and what kind of jobs related to that animal she was so happy and I could see that had gave her a confidence boost – very rewarding!.

I know some of that parents from Orgill and asked than how their child had enjoyed the visit we had done and they said that they had chatted about it at home after school and it got them talking about what they wanted to do when they left school” Jemma Dobson, Plant Maintenance Co-odinator at Morgan Sindall Infrastructure as part of the Programme and Project Partners (PPP)