Stewarts has teamed up with education charity Future Frontiers for a fifth year. A group of local year 10 students visited our London offices in January and February to take part in the 2025 coaching programme.
Emily Goddard and Karen Calverley summarise this year’s programme, in an article following the video below.
What is Future Frontiers?
Future Frontiers is an education charity that partners with local schools to deliver tailored careers coaching and advice to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
It is a disappointing reality in the UK that family income remains the strongest predictor of how well a young person will do at school and their future opportunities. Young people from low-income backgrounds are less likely to do well at school, enter further education and secure fulfilling employment.
Future Frontiers aims to change this by providing young people with the support, resources and opportunities they need to fulfil their potential in school and thrive in their further education and chosen career paths.
To achieve this, Future Frontiers delivers a two-year programme comprising three stages:
Stage 1: Students complete six hours of tailored career coaching with a business professional to analyse their career priorities and values and explore a wide range of careers that interest them.
Stage 2: Students produce a personalised action plan with the help of a trained advisor expert in the post-16 landscape. This plan is shared with the student’s support networks.
Stage 3: Students receive targeted and personalised support on an ongoing basis to help them stick to their action plan and overcome any hurdles relating to enrolment after GCSEs.
Future Frontiers Coaching Programme 2025
As in previous years, Stewarts’ volunteers took part in Stage 1 of the programme by delivering 1-1 career coaching to participating students over four 90-minute sessions. Before the programme started, all volunteers received dedicated training to ensure they were well-equipped to be effective coaches.
During the sessions, coaches encouraged students to reflect on their skills, interests and career values. They then explored different career sectors and job roles, identifying the most suitable and encouraging the students to consider the required qualifications. In doing so, they also explained to the students the different post-GCSE pathways available.
In the final session, coaches tied everything together, and each student had the opportunity to speak to someone with firsthand experience in their chosen career sector or job role (a “sector role model”). The sector role models provided a window into what it was like to work in that role and how they got there. A diverse range of role models took part, including a sonographer, an electrician, an MMA fighter, a theatre/costume designer and a paramedic. This reflected the significant variety in students’ interests and aspirations and highlighted the need for tailored careers advice.
At the end of the programme, there was a graduation ceremony where the students were presented with their certificates for successfully completing the programme. Anita Jewitt delivered a speech at the beginning of the ceremony in which she provided insight into her own career journey, which really resonated with the students. Each coach then gave a speech about their student; it was fantastic to hear how each student had grown in confidence over the course of the programme and how, in just four weeks, they felt more equipped for the future.
It was a highly rewarding experience for the coaches, and 100% of the students agreed that their coach had helped them find an inspirational career.
This year, Future Frontiers set up a portal that enables students and coaches to continue to communicate should they wish to so that coaches can follow their students’ progress through the next stages of the programme and share in their successes.
We wish all the students huge success in their future endeavours. We are proud to have taken part for a fifth year in a programme that seeks to address the cycle of inequality in education.
Callum Hibbs, Transition Manager at Future Frontiers, comments: “Facilitating this program has been an incredible experience for me. Witnessing the coaches’ dedication to each student has been truly impressive. This marks Stewarts’ fifth year partnering with Future Frontiers, having supported almost 100 young people since 2021. It has been a remarkable partnership that I am proud to be part of.
It has also been great to see employees from various departments at Stewarts get involved in this program. We have had senior team members, newer staff, and both legal and non-legal personnel participate. I am amazed at the diverse range of experiences they have shared with the young people we are working with. The dedication and care exhibited by the coaches in fostering these work relationships have been truly inspiring.”
Emily Goddard comments: “It was a real pleasure coordinating this years’ Future Frontiers programme at Stewarts. It is a fantastic charity and I really enjoyed volunteering as a coach a few years ago. It was great to witness from the other side the impact the programme has on both students and coaches over just a few weeks. A real highlight for me was watching the “graduation” ceremony and hearing about the strong relationships that had been built and the growth in confidence of the students taking part.”
Student feedback
Future personal trainer, Mason
“Thank you for helping me find a career that I might choose in the future and helping me find out a lot about what I need to do or study for it. Thank you!”
Future barrister, Riya
“I am so thankful that I had this opportunity to speak on my future law career. My confidence has grown dramatically, and I am now more prepared on my future.”
Future child protection officer, Maggie
“Thank you for helping me find what jobs suit me and giving me more information on what educational support I have next after my GCSEs. Your support and kindness have given me more confidence and encouraged me.”
Coach testimonials
Associate, Amy Goldman
“I really enjoyed participating in the Future Frontiers programme. Getting to know my student and guiding him through the coaching programme was incredibly rewarding. It is fantastic that I will now be able to hear from my student after the coaching programme has finished via Future Frontier’s new online platform. I really look forward to finding out how he gets on with his GCSEs and what choices he makes in terms of post-16 education.”
Paralegal, Florence Rhodes
“Volunteering for the Future Frontiers coaching programme was an incredibly rewarding experience. I enjoyed getting to know my student and seeing how she progressed during the programme. She became more confident and comfortable and was really grateful for the support I provided her with.
“Using the materials provided, we were able to find our students’ key strengths and interests. The Future Frontiers team was very helpful and guided us through the sessions, updating us on new opportunities and career paths available for young people today. The discussions with my student were very insightful, and she was very enthusiastic about speaking to a sector role model from her desired career.
“I particularly enjoyed the graduation ceremony at the end of the programme. The students were all very thankful for our support, and it was lovely to see them all excited about their future careers.”
Paralegal, Annabelle Davies
“It was an absolute joy watching my student explore careers and career pathways that she had not previously known were available or attainable. My student’s confidence grew tenfold when she discovered there were careers out there which truly excite her and align with her passions. She was previously scared of falling into a career where she might be ‘trapped in a box, and Future Frontiers helped her discover that this certainly did not have to be the case. It was amazing to be a part of her journey in discovering this, and I am so glad Future Frontiers has helped turn some of her fears for the future into excitement.”
Paralegal, Janita Jefferson
“It was a really fantastic experience, and I would recommend the programme to anyone who is considering doing volunteering.
“It was amazing to see my student grow in confidence each week, and I enjoyed helping them achieve their goals in finding their future career paths. It was inspiring to see a student realise they can achieve their goals and then be driven to work towards it. It was a really rewarding experience.”
Head of Learning and Development, Amber Allan
“Participating in the Future Frontiers coaching programme was an incredibly rewarding experience that has left a lasting impact on both me and the student I had the privilege to mentor. Future Frontiers is a powerful initiative that pairs volunteers with disadvantaged young people, providing them with the guidance, inspiration and practical tools they need to make informed decisions about their future education and career paths. Over four coaching sessions, I had the opportunity to work closely with my student, helping her to explore her aspirations, understand her potential career options and build confidence in her next steps.
“Engaging in this programme allowed me to see firsthand the power of mentorship and career guidance in shaping a young person’s future. As someone whose area of expertise is adult education, it was both humbling and inspiring to witness the determination and potential in such a young person, despite the challenges she faced. Her sense of passion and purpose was truly uplifting and reminded me of why it’s important never to let obstacles come in the way of our dreams. The experience strengthened my communication, listening, coaching and leadership skills. It reminded me of the importance of good role models in our lives. Seeing the direct impact of my guidance was incredibly fulfilling and deepened my sense of purpose and motivation around my chosen profession of learning and development.
“If you are looking for a meaningful way to make a difference, to inspire someone else and to learn something about yourself in the process then I highly recommend becoming a Future Frontiers coach. The experience is enriching and fulfilling, very well run and offers a structured and impactful way to support the next generation. The commitment is manageable, the training is excellent, and the reward of seeing a student grow in confidence and ambition is priceless.”
