The Future Skills Questionnaire (FSQ) data visualisation tools enable Careers Leaders to quickly identify areas of strength and weaknesses in their careers programme. This data intelligence can then be used to help plan activities to meet the requirements of larger groups, smaller cohorts, or individual learners.
Below are some practical examples of how Careers Leaders can apply their FSQ data in this way.
Example: Identifying areas of strength in your careers programme
Using the Future Skills Questionnaire ‘Summary report’ is a great way of starting identifying areas of strength in your careers programme. In the example below, a Careers Leader looks at their ‘Starting Secondary’ questionnaire data to identify the areas of strength in their programme for Year 7 learners.
1. The Careers Leaders selects Learner > Questionnaires on the navigation bar, then selects the ‘Summary report’ on the second tab.
They see that 54 students (93% of the Starting Secondary questionnaires sent out) have been completed so far:
Tip: ideally you want to get as close to 100% of learners completing their questionnaire as possible, so that your data gives the most comprehensive view of your careers programme. Some learners may have missed your introduction to the FSQ, so you may want to plan an extra session for them to catch-up.
2. To start identifying areas of strength in their programme, the Careers Leader sorts the learners’ answers in the ‘Careers knowledge and skills’ section of the questionnaire by positive responses:
3. The Careers Leader looks at the questions that have received the most positive responses from Year 7. In this example, they can see that the highest percentage of learners (63%) answered Question 7 positively:
Question 7 asked learners ‘Do you know any trustworthy websites that can help you decide what to do in the future’? Earlier in the term all Year 7 learners had completed a Benchmark 2 activity about trusted online sources of careers information. The Careers Leader can see from their questionnaire data that the majority of learners are now confident in knowing where to find this information: as the activity was successful, they make a note in the activity’s notes section to copy the activity into next year’s Plan.
Example: Identifying areas for improvement
1. The Careers Leader now looks at the ‘Essential skills for life and work’ section of their ‘Starting Secondary’ questionnaire data. Again, they sort the question responses by positive responses:
2. They see that one of the questions that received the highest number of negative responses (67%) was
Question 4: Working well with others by respecting different opinions:
3. The Careers Leader also sees that Question 2: Solving problems, by thinking about the positive and negatives of different options, also received a high number of negative responses:
The Careers Leader sees that their Y7 learners, while scoring high positive responses for using their own ideas, are responding negatively to questions that ask them to reflect on the way they work and collaborate together in groups.
4. Using this intelligence, the Careers Leader looks for resources on teamwork within the Skillsbuilder Hub:
Tip: You can access the Skillsbuilder bank of resources from within Compass+. Just selects Careers Partners > Skillsbuilder Framework on the navigation bar.
5. The Careers Leader also decides to speak with a teacher of practical subject where team or group work is frequently required, to see if a career skills-related activity might be facilitated within a Y7 lesson. After discussing options with a Science teacher, a decision is made to invite a guest speaker from a local pharmaceutical company to come in and give a careers talk about collaboration and respecting individual opinions, following-on from a class-based Science project.
The Careers Leader creates the activity for each Y7 form in Compass+, with Benchmark 4 as the main category:
By creating the activity and assigning it to Benchmark 4, the Careers Leader knows that the activity will contribute to their overall Gatsby Benchmark scores. They will also be able to see how the learners’ scores for working collaboratively in groups has improved the next time they complete the FSQ.