About the Book
Foreword by Colonel Dame Kelly Holmes.
Regardless of one's plans for the future, many people's careers are founded on a series of chance encounters, experiences and serendipity. School, college, university, jobs, family, sports, hobbies, friends, relationships - these are all fertile grounds for career-related conversations and explorations.What if we teachers, guides, mentors, parents and peers started to notice these seemingly unconnected happenings and, indeed, started to engineer and encourage them to happen?
Using the mantra 'every adult is a careers teacher', The Ladder will inspire teachers to explicitly link their subject area to students' futures, both in school and outside its walls, and support them in doing so. Bernie draws upon his 30-year career in education and business development to bring clarity, focus and ideas to educators as to how they can best start students on their own ladders to success.
Ultimately, in writing this book, Bernie's aim is to bring young people's futures to life with some personal skills reflection and forward planning designed to help them as they embark on their fulfilling futures - regardless of their upbringing, academic achievements or ethnic background.
About the Author :
Andrew `Bernie` Bernard is an entrepreneur, a TEDx Speaker, a director of both Innovative Enterprise and National Careers Week, and a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association. Bernie - as he prefers to be known - has, since 2006,worked with schools, businesses, charities, universities and colleges to help over 150,000 young people bring their future to life through enterprise and careers workshops.
Review :
The Ladder is a brilliant user guide for educators and employers invested in providing young people with opportunities to succeed. Brimming with self-reflection tools and practical and thought-provoking exercises, this is a great book for those of us who have been helped on our own path when we were younger, and are now looking for ideas and support to pay it forward.
Sharon Davies, CEO, Young Enterprise
The Ladder is a must-have manual for all who wish to help students make confident career choices. It is useful, practical, concise and, above all, encouraging and inspiring. It will be loved by career teachers, indeed all teachers, but it is also a valuable adip in and dip out' resource full of tools and ideas for every adult wanting to help children and young people to enjoy a successful future. I read The Ladder as an employer, a business owner, the chair of an enterprise agency and a patron of a youth enterprise support organisation a and I will be recommending this excellent handbook to all of my colleagues. I recommend Chapter 2 on the continuum for the acquisition of skills and knowledge (CASK) for every reader, but after that you choose the chapter of tools and ideas relevant to the student you are helping. The book features a number of tools a like the 7 Skills Assessment Sheet (7SAS) and the STAR and GROW models a and they are all clearly and helpfully explained. Most of the tools, ideas and recommendations are new to me, even though I've been interested in employability skills and enterprise education for nearly 30 years. Chapter 10 on acareers questions' is my favourite and I'll be recommending it to all of my colleagues, ranging from primary school teachers to educators at colleges and universities, especially in the run-up to Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Tony Robinson, OBE, author of The Happipreneur: Why #MicroBizMatters?
Bernie is an amazing man whose passion has helped develop and encourage young people to aspire and to be successful, whatever their background or level of education. His very readable and useful new book continues this tradition a as Bernie's passion and enthusiasm to help anyone, and not just young people, is clear throughout The Ladder.If you are a school head, a teacher, a careers lead, a parent or a businessperson, then parts, if not all, of this book are for you. It can be used over many years to encourage you and to provide advice, guidance and sources of information. The Ladder will help anyone who, like me, believes that we must help encourage and support all young people to develop and then achieve their dreams.
Professor Nigel Adams, Director, Buckingham Enterprise & Innovation Unit (BEIU), University of Buckingham
Comprehensive and up to date, The Ladder is packed with practical and achievable suggestions for enhancing careers education from primary age upwards. Bernie has compiled a wealth of thorough research and draws on his years of experience working with young people across the UK. He provides a clear vision for how teachers can provide effective careers education for their pupils and shares his passionate belief that all young people should be encouraged a and enabled a to achieve their potential.
Gemma Hay, Principal Teacher of Citizenship, George Heriotas School
I've known and worked with Andrew aBernie' Bernard for years. He always delivers practical, real-world and down-to-earth advice on employability and success for students. His new book The Ladder is no exception. A great read full of practical tips for both students and their teachers.
Lee Jackson, award-winning motivational speaker and author of How to Enjoy and Succeed at School and College
Life is like a game of snakes and ladders a this book helps students not only to find their ladders but to climb them too. Crammed with research, reflections and insights, The Ladder will be an invaluable resource for people helping students to fulfil their potential.
Professor Paul McGee, motivational speaker and Sunday Times bestselling author
My careers master told me I should ado' business studies at Portsmouth Polytechnic. I've no idea why, beyond my having told him I found economics fascinating. Years later, having read economics at the University of Bristol and made a bit of a mark as an ITV newscaster, I did the prize-giving at my old school. The head teacher greeted me with the words, aI always thought you'd end up doing something like that.' He didn't mean it nicely. But my history teacher, who I adored, said: aAh, Stewart! And what are you doing these days?' As a proud parent of four, I now know it is all about finding ambition, nurturing belief and keeping open the widest range of options.Enriched with references to an Aladdin's cave of qualifications, educational experiences and institutions, The Ladder encourages parents, teachers and trainers to think widely and laterally. It is the least we owe our children a and, for that, we owe Bernie a debt of gratitude.
Alastair Stewart, OBE, journalist
Not only will this book support those working in education, but it will ultimately transform the career journeys and experiences of young people everywhere. Packed full of information, tried-and-tested ideas, reflective tasks and case studies, The Ladder is a fantastic resource that I wish my teachers had read when I was in school!
Gavin Oattes, bestselling author and international keynote speaker
Within a changing landscape of education, job options and, more pertinently, an uncertainty over strategies for economic recovery and opportunities for students following COVID-19 and Brexit, The Ladder is an insightful and easy-to-read book that enables professionals and parents to help young adults to climb athe ladder' of careers education to achieve their potential. The book is full to the brim with practical tips, support structures and thought-provoking ideas linked to relevant research material. Bernie communicates throughout that meeting the challenge to guide and encourage young people to take a more direct path to their future success and happiness is both doable and fulfilling. Particular strengths of the book are the range of strategies, tips and tasks for self-reflection, which are augmented by visually effective and supportive diagrams. The author discusses the use of CASK tools, the 7 Skills Assessment Sheet, the GROW model and STAR framework to plot learning, personal skills, ainformed confidence' and self-worth to promote achievement and potential. He emphasises the need for adults to offer support in order to help young people gain additional skills that will open up awindows of opportunity' and create pathways for access. Current evidence shows that too many graduates in areas such as history, sport science, etc. are left in cul-de-sacs after graduating. Bernie is a positive advocate of breaking down young people's misguided perceptions of barriers to climbing the ladder and sets out how they can start climbing. He emphasises the need to dispel fears and avoidance techniques such as auniversity is not for people like me'. The discussion on work such as the Gatsby benchmarks and push and pull factors in counselling, guidance and parenting are also beneficial. In addition, readers will benefit from Bernie's discussion on the need to offer realistic support to young people with SEND in making career choices. This book is essential reading for all educators who have key roles in opening up realistic windows of opportunity, raising awareness and inspiring the athey did, you can' attitudes of learners in schools, colleges and universities to climb the ladder to happiness and fulfilment.
John Morris, Director, JTM Educational Consultant
