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It's a bold, welcome ambition. It's also, according to a new report from the charity Education and Employers covered in The Times this month, at serious risk of falling short.
Only 58 per cent of KS4 pupils currently complete any work experience at all. 94 per cent of teachers say job shadowing is difficult to organise. The barriers are practical and stubborn: a shortage of high-quality placements, competition between schools chasing the same employers, rising travel costs, and the difficulty of releasing staff to supervise it.
Nick Chambers, chief executive of Education and Employers, put the risk plainly: "There is a real risk that without a proper infrastructure and funding this policy will simply advantage the advantaged, widening the social mobility gap further. Good work experience should not depend on who your parents know or where you happen to live." We agree, and it's the exact problem Springpod was built to solve.
Why this matters beyond September
The stakes here are bigger than compliance with a new guarantee. Young people who get strong employer engagement before 16 are five times less likely to end up not in education, employment or training (NEET). Those with four or more employer engagements go on to earn 17 per cent more on average than peers without. Work experience isn't a box-ticking exercise. It's one of the clearest levers we have on social mobility.
But right now, access to that lever depends heavily on social capital: whether a pupil's family knows someone who can offer a placement, whether their school has the staff time and local employer relationships to organise one. That's precisely what Chambers means by "advantaging the advantaged." A national guarantee without a national infrastructure risks turning a levelling-up policy into another gap between well-connected pupils and everyone else.
Where Springpod fits in
Springpod exists to give every school the infrastructure to connect pupils with real employers at scale, rather than leaving it to individual staff, individual contact books, or individual postcodes.
One point worth being clear on: our virtual work experience offer (VWEX) is not a substitute for in-person placements, and we don't position it as one. It exists to help schools do more in-person work experience, not less. VWEX helps address the exact barriers this report flags, easing the burden of staff time, geography and placement shortages, so schools can offer meaningful employer engagement to more pupils while still prioritising real, in-person experience wherever it's possible. The goal is more pupils getting through the door of a real workplace, not fewer.
Through the platform, pupils can explore roles and sectors at employers including exciting organisations such as the RAF, Rolls-Royce, JLR and Amazon, and hear directly from those doing the jobs. Structured activities build the same employability skills a week on-site would start to develop: communication, problem-solving, and the confidence to operate in an unfamiliar environment.
That matters in two ways. First, a pupil who has already explored a sector arrives at an in-person placement, a careers fair, or an application with a real sense of what the role involves, not a guess and the skills needed to thrive in a role in that sector. Second, and just as valuable, it helps pupils rule things out. Discovering early that a sector isn't for you is as useful as discovering it is, and far cheaper to learn virtually than by spending one of the ten precious in-person days the new guarantee allows for finding out the hard way.
The bigger impact picture
This gap between ambition and access is exactly why Springpod treats social impact as core to what we do, not a side project. The placements, micro internships and engagements our partners run with young people, including the kind of work experience covered in this piece, add up to a measurable social return for the young people involved.
We've set out the full detail behind that, methodology, partner-level breakdown and the difference it makes, in our social value whitepaper. It's worth a read if you want to understand the fuller case for why closing the work experience gap matters, not just for September 2026, but for the young people on the other side of it.
What needs to happen next
Nick Newman of Work Experience Month is right that this needs better collaboration between schools, Careers Hubs and local employer networks. Deirdre Hughes is right that none of it works without properly trained careers advisers guiding pupils through it. And Chambers is right that funding and infrastructure have to come with the ambition, not after it.
Springpod is already working with schools and employers to build that infrastructure ahead of September 2026. If you're a school preparing for the guarantee, or an employer wondering how to get involved during Work Experience Month and beyond, we'd like to help you get ready.
Get in touch with the Springpod team to find out how we can support your school or organisation ahead of the September 2026 work experience guarantee.
