What Do Parents Want From Employers?: Survey of Parents 2024

We recently asked our network of parents and carers what they need to know when introducing careers to their children.

We found that more parents view apprenticeships as providing better career prospects than traditional university degrees. However, eight out of 10 also told us they want more information from employers about apprenticeships.

On this page, we go through some of the key findings of our survey. There’s lots more in the full results – which release on Tuesday 16th July as a handy guide. Here’s how you can access:

• Parents: Sign up to join our priority list and get the guide as soon as it is released – and receive the latest opportunities from employers straight to your inbox.
• Teachers/careers leaders: You can download the guide from your Teacher Dashboard – sign up for a Success at School account to access the report when it’s published.
• Employers & Organisations: You can download the guide by signing up here.

What were our key findings?

Success at School is a national UK careers organisation for 13-19 year olds. We recently surveyed our network of 17,000 parents to better understand what they need when introducing careers to their children.

Key findings include:

• 8 out of 10 parents felt employers need more information from employers about apprenticeships: Parents favoured apprenticeships over university, but felt under-informed about all aspects of the application process.
• Most organisations are not on the radar for over 80% of ethnic minority parents, and 70% of parents overall: This means numerous early career programmes may be inaccessible to children, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Parents prioritise employers who support mental health: The overwhelming majority of respondents (95%) considered it important or very important when recommending an organisation to their child.

Why did we carry out this survey?

We wanted to find out what parents and carers need when introducing the topic of careers to their children. In particular, we wanted to understand how well-informed they were about employers and their apprenticeship programmes – and what they need from employers to support their children through the apprenticeship application process.

This data will help us educate the UK’s biggest school-leaver and apprenticeships programme providers on how they can improve access to opportunities and information for parents as they support their children on their careers journey. We hope this will help young people and their parents discover life-changing apprenticeship opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise get to hear about.

We are at a time of change for apprenticeships. The previous government launched a review of apprenticeships, looking at what needs to change to meet the demands of the UK workforce. The new government has pledged reforms to the training and education available to 16-21-year-olds to boost the technical skills needed to deliver their industrial strategy. This could create a whole range of new opportunities for young people. Our survey shows employers how they can get new and existing programmes in front of the young people they want to reach.

Mitesh Bhimjiyani, Founder & CEO commented: “Our research shows that parents often lack the information needed to help their children make informed career decisions. This issue is more pronounced among parents from ethnic minority backgrounds, posing a barrier to social mobility. As an organisation, we build connections between underrepresented students, their parents and employers. This enables us to support employers in their social mobility efforts and make parents feel more confident about the guidance they are giving their child.”

Want to learn more?

We are using these results to help employers get better information to parents – sign up to our mailing list to get the most relevant opportunities straight to your inbox.

By signing up, we’ll send you a handy guide to our survey as soon as it is released on Tuesday 16th July. Here’s just some of the information we dig into in the guide:

• What opportunities other parents preferred: Which industries did they opt for — Engineering, Health or Finance? 
• How confident other parents felt discussing careers: Our results indicate there could be a significant number of programmes your children are missing out on.
• How we can connect you with employers: What we are doing to bridge the education gap between parents and employers.

Teachers/careers leaders: You can download the guide from your Teacher Dashboard – sign up for a Success at School account to access the report when it’s published.

Are you an employer?

If you're an employer and want to help educate parents about careers, please email reach@successatschool.org