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The week from 3rd – 7th March sees the seventh annual National Apprenticeship Week taking place, which celebrates how apprenticeships can change the lives of young people positively, particularly those that may not be academically orientated and, at the same time, benefit businesses and the economy.

National Apprenticeship week focuses on four themes, which are the main motivators for taking up Apprenticeships and defines a new era for them. For employers, they are:

• Quality – Apprenticeships are of a high standard and quality assured
• Growth – Apprenticeships create sustainable growth
• Pride – Where Apprenticeships engage in national awards and competitions they reward success
• Value – New funding and financial incentives are available for those organisations who take on apprentices

For young people, they are:

• Quality – Apprenticeships lead to excellent careers that have real progression pathways.
• Growth – Apprenticeships offer genuine personal development with over 250 skills and industries to choose from.
• Pride – Where Apprenticeships engage in national awards and competitions apprentices are recognised and rewarded for their success.
• Value – Apprentices get paid whilst attaining nationally recognised qualifications and work experience.

To assist teachers in drawing their students’ attention to National Apprenticeship Week and to apprenticeships in general, Teaching Resources UK have a number of lesson and assembly resources that teachers can use. These include:

• Work-related learning- these are a large collection of key stage 3 and 4 lesson resources highlighting a myriad of different aspects of the working and the workplace including titles such as:

o KS4 Behaviour in the workplace
o KS3 Work and wages
o KS4 How businesses work

• Enterprise - these are another large range of excellent lesson and assembly plans focusing on the concepts of success and failure of entrepreneurial ides. Titles include:

o KS3 What is enterprise?
o KS3 Economic ideas
o KS4 Financial risks in business

All these resources can assist educators in giving students a better idea of different aspects of the world of work and with the added focus of National Apprenticeship Week they will prove helpful and equip students with the information that will allow them to consider what areas of industry or business that they may wish to develop their careers in and what pathways they may wish to follow into those respective careers.

In the week between 3rd and 9th March, Britain’s biggest climate change campaign takes place, which hopes to ‘inspire a new wave of action to create a sustainable future’. Every year, 3000 events organised by schools, businesses, charities and councils are attended by up to half a million people hoping push the issue of climate change to the forefront of our minds. The organisers of ‘Climate Week’ want different groups and organisations to start planning events, no matter how small, in order to support the campaign.

This is a great opportunity to bring to the attention of your students issues and topics associated with climate change, conservation issues, conservation volunteering and sustainability. In order to help you deliver these subject areas, Teaching Resources UK offer some fantastic lesson resources and assembly plans appropriate for both key stage 3 and 4 students which are thought-provoking and engaging. They include:

• Climate Change Assembly - this is an excellent assembly plan that aims to clarify what is meant by climate change and to teach students about the disasters that have occurred already and whether they were as a result of a changing climate. The teaching resources include an assembly script and a PowerPoint presentation to aid the assembly.

• Conservation Volunteering Lesson - in this lesson students focus on their local and immediate environment, and how they might be able to improve it through the use of group work and worksheets.

• Conservation Issues Lesson - this lesson focuses on what exactly conservation means. Students investigate the major conservation issues using online, guided research, worksheets and group work.

• Sustainability Lesson – here your pupils will develop a better understanding of global warming and research issue of cause and effect. Students are encouraged to reflect on how changes can be made on a daily basis with regards to providing sustainability within environments.

The assembly and lesson plans are perfect for supporting climate week by introducing and explaining the complex and sometimes controversial issues and topic areas associated with climate change. Your students will then be interested and feel engaged and wish to contribute to the discussion and debate.

Teachers today have seen massive changes in pupils’ attitudes and perceptions to relationships and sex. Recent news reports reinforce the notion that the popularity of smart phones has only served to amplify some of the issues, in particular the availability of accessing the web 24 hours a day. With total freedom and anonymity, this allows young people to view pornography at the touch of the screen. Shockingly, some male members of my class are more than happy to share with staff how much of this they actually take part in and how they get around their parents finding out.

More worryingly, I have seen a significant increase of incidents where young people, especially girls, are using phones to upload and provide a steady stream of suggestive photos to social networking sites. A symptom of our times? Maybe, but the fact is, this is now the world in which we live so how do we educate the next generation to move forward?

Society can't expect young people to be mature enough not to give in to temptation and access such materials, especially at an impressionable age. Curiosity and peer influences are heavy instigators, as are unrestricted websites that require a simple declaration of 'yes, I’m over 18'. We could also look deeper and maybe lay blame at the door of ‘celebrity culture’ and their quest to be buffed visions of perfection, which provide our students with unrealistic and unobtainable images. This is where the power of websites like Facebook and Instagram capitalise on this by notifying ‘likes’ or comments to an uploaded photo which gives young people a little reassuring message that someone thinks they’re attractive. This is particularly dangerous if privacy settings aren’t in place as it invites anyone to leave inappropriate messages. These are the types of issue that need to be addressed in order to help protect our students.

So in response to this, our teaching profession should be being encouraged to tackle these issues head on in an open and un-judgemental fashion; we understand the ramifications of being able to access these types of materials at the click of a mouse. We have great influence in guiding students and have the ability to lift the lid on the industry; its myths, dangers, addictive nature, and false representations. By demystifying the whole issue we can provide some common sense, in what is, for some, a taboo subject. In all of my experiences young people report that they find it very difficult to ask or talk to their parents about sex and relationships, proving that it’s more important than ever that we focus on these points.

So the message is how do we make a difference? Understandably, this is an emotive and complex subject to get to grips with. Lots of us are not receiving much in the way of additional training or ready to go resources that stand up against a teenage class. This is where these prepared lessons really help. They are very relevant and current; classes will relate to the mix of activities and familiar stimuli like campaigns by the Dove Company and the Lynx men’s deodorant adverts that students will have seen on TV. Below is a basic outline of how some of the issues raised in this blog directly link to the teaching resources in this set. The SRE lessons help make a complex subject easy; having these tried and tested materials to hand overcomes the headache of what to cover and how.

Lesson Plan 1 in the set helps establish what are ‘healthy relationships’ and seeks to dispel myths about sexual stereotyping and what both genders want from a sexual relationship.

Lesson Plan 2 and 3 in the set of resources set out to establish the law, online safety and the sexualising of young people.

Lesson 4 in the set, clarifies sexual rights/responsibilities and boundaries and clearly reinforces what sexual bullying is.