The Francis Crick Institute: Part 1 - Genesis

T Level champion’s role (0:00-1:31)

In terms of how we've been managing the setting up of the programme, initially it was me in my role as the education manager who sort of first spotted that there was going to be this pressure on schools to be able to find placements. We were hearing things from a number of schools. And also prior to moving into outreach, I'd worked in scientific research, so I had a good view of what the opportunities and the challenges might be for potential hosts in taking on students at the Crick for these quite long placements.

It was clear to me that one of those challenges that was perhaps going to be most easily mitigated was around making sure that whoever the hosts were, they felt really supported by the Crick and they had clear expectations of what we and the students needed from them, and that all of their kind of processes and the admin was sorted for them and as much as possible that burden was removed from them.

And also having somebody who would act as that link between them and the school, but that person being very much a Crick person who would be able to advocate on their behalf. So luckily I already had Ellie on my team who was managing the work experience programme and she agreed to take on this new project of managing what became the T level placement programme.

Doing things for the first time (1:32-2:13)

So the role itself at the minute involves mostly lots of planning and thinking. It's obviously the first time we've done this, so everything has been set up for the first time. So it's creating lots of documents, like I mentioned the memorandum of understanding with the school, we've got student agreement documents, support documents that are going to the staff internally, and then setting up the processes themselves.

So it's, yeah, it's a lot of doing things for the first time. And the thinking behind that is quite extensive. There's lots of research around what's already out there and what other places have done. And then there's also the sort of managing the partnership with the school side of it. So meeting with them regularly to check in, establishing the curriculum support that we can provide.

Getting the rest of the organisation on board (2:14-2:52)

So what we can do outside of the actual placements themselves, and also maintaining those links with the staffs and teams that Clare managed to onboard in the first place. Obviously, there's quite a big gap between getting them to express their interest and the placements actually happening. So making sure that they're still engaged if the staff turn over, making sure that the team leader or there's somebody else in the team who's equally invested in making these happen within their team.

So I'm hoping that soon it's going to move more into actually thinking about the placements themselves once we know where the students are going to be, thinking through what guidance we need to provide to the internal staff so that they feel really supported, and the actual placement planning from their side goes really smoothly.

How the role evolves over time (2:54-3:41)

How I see this sort of evolving over the next year or two is that I think once that first set of placements happen, it's going to move into the evaluation and improvement side of things. So actually, what worked well in what we did, what could have been improved for next time?

And then I’m hoping that once we've done this a couple of times it's going to start to move into how our work experience programme runs, which is much more sort of business as usual than actually thinking and establishing new processes and new documents, which hopefully isn't going to be part of this process anymore because we'll have those things. So as with the work experience programme it moves into a more of a coordinating role and we have other team members who can then pick up the things that we know they work, we know how to make them happen.

And this is our process that we we've established over the last two years. So that's how I see it evolving eventually.

Commitment from senior managers and staff (0:00-1:35)

So one of the things that I had to do was to take the proposal for T Level placements to the Crick senior team and make the case as it would be ultimately them who would decide whether as an organisation we would end up hosting the students. They had a lot of questions around how the placements would practically work, lots of helpful suggestions of ways to make the placements really beneficial, and they were generally really very positive.

But one of the key things that they were asking was whether staff would actually really want to get involved in these placements given what a relatively large commitment they were. So I did also have conversations with a number of potential supervisors, and one thing that came across to me from those conversations was that it was particularly staff who'd come from a background where maybe they'd taken a technical route themselves, or where they had past experience of taking people through technical qualifications, that they were particularly interested in T levels and what these placements might look like.

So typically, they were enthusiastic about hosting and saw this these placements as a way that a new generation of young people might find a way into these practical science roles that otherwise they might not do if they were going down the A level route.

What motivates staff the most (1:36-2:49)

So I think what Clare's just outlined around our technical staff was a really big motivator for them. I think one thing that I saw as a really lovely interaction was when we brought the teachers from our local school in for a teacher insight day so that they could get oversight I guess of what placements we were going to offer and they get to meet the teams themselves, and watching those colleagues who are very passionate about technical routes into science, getting to meet the teachers who are on the ground doing, you know, running the T Level course.

It was really lovely to watch that interaction between them because they, they had so much passion and it was just really nice and you could see that that was a massive motivator for so many of our teams and so many of our colleagues. And then I think the other side of it is,  them seeing it as a skill building opportunity, either for themselves or for people within their team.

It's really an opportunity for people to gain informal line management or coaching skills, and I think that for some of our teams, as well as the motivational side of the supporting vocational courses, I think, yeah, the opportunity for themselves or their own colleagues to gain some skills throughout it has been a big motivator as well.

Recognising and understanding colleagues’ concerns (2:50-3:45)

In terms of what they're anxious about, I think the majority of these anxieties revolve around the fact that it's just a new thing. There's that element of, you know, the unknown specifically around I think how much training it's going to take to get the students up to speed in the lab, whether it's going to take so long it'll actually impact the usual work that they offer.

And also, there's been a couple of things around whether they need to maybe employ some bank staff during the placement to cover the usual work that might get missed. So there's a bit of a worry around costs. But staff are still signing up. They seem really excited. So it's not that it's letting them stop them.

It's just that they're voicing those concerns to us so that it's things that we can start to overcome. I will admit I can't always answer their questions because we haven't done it before but it's around I think managing my response to that, making sure that we're learning as much as we can from the resources that are online and available, but also from networking and talking to other places that have offered these before so that we can give the best advice possible.

Coming up with good solutions (3:46-4:51)

In terms of actually coming up with a real solution around that worry of students coming in and not having skills to start contributing to the lab early on in their placement, one of the reasons we have worked with the school to make sure the placements are in the second year of their course is so that in the first year, during the sort of class time and the curriculum content, the core content, we are going to support them with learning some of those basic skills that, no matter where they get placed in the Crick, they'll likely need to have.

So that could be, you know, hard skills like pipetting or the maths to do a, you know, a dilution series that they might need. But there's also the sort of softer skills around communication and teamwork that that having never worked, likely never worked in a place like the Crick before, they might need to have some support with before they come in the building.

So this, along with, I think, opportunities throughout the next year or so for supervisors in the Crick to actually meet the students, I think will go some way to actually squashing that worry around, you know, who will be coming into their teams, how much knowledge and skills will they bring in with them.

And I think communicating that to Crick staff has gone a long way to reducing those anxieties around the placements themselves.

Choosing a provider (0:00-1:32)

So our current provider is Maria Fidelis School. They are based a few minutes’ walk from the Crick in a region of Camden called Somers Town.

In terms of how we went about selecting who our provider would be, we did get approached by providers, a wide range of providers actually, some closer by, some even from well outside London.

But we wanted to work with a school who were already part of our programme. So our education programme reaches all of the secondary schools in Camden, but Maria Fidela's school are currently the only one in the borough to be offering the T Level in science. And we really thought it would be good for us to work with them because we felt what we'd learned from running work experience placements is that what makes these placements and these programmes consistently successful is having sort of strong and stable relationships with the schools.

Particularly in the event of something going wrong, it's just there's a level of trust and clarity between the organisations that means it's much easier to deal with that. So over the 10 years that we've been working with Maria Fidelis School and the teachers there, that time that we've previously invested in a number of projects, I think is now really paying off.

How the partnership with a provider should work (1:33-2:59)

For the T Level programme, we're able to go into partnership with them feeling that they are really clear about what they want, they're responsive when we approach them, they're sensitive to our needs as a very different organisation from them, and in turn, that makes them very open to suggestions that we might make and feedback that we might give them. But also that if we have concerns, they take them seriously.

And I think also importantly, it works both ways, so in turn we have a quite deep understanding of how their school and how their teachers and their students work. So many of their students have been taking part in our programme now since they were back in primary school, and it's that kind of level of insight both ways that I think is going to be really helpful for making this a success.

In terms of what we expect from the school, we're really conscious that the bulk of delivering this qualification sits with them. We will help as much as we can, but ultimately it's their responsibility to deliver what the children know. But from our perspective, there are also things that we want them to know on top of perhaps what the actual demands of the qualification on paper look like for us.

How the provider should prepare the student for the placement (3:00-3:47)

It's about making sure that when the students arrive, they're pretty much work ready on day one of their placement. So we hope the school are going to help us set expectations around what the demands of the placement might look like in terms particularly of how the behaviour might be different from what they're used to at school, or maybe certain knowledge and skills that it would be really useful for them to have ahead of joining us.

And all of that is really to make that transition into the placement easier I think for both sides, so they and us are really focusing on ensuring the students are excited and feeling confident about coming to join us.

Developing the relationship with the provider (3:48-4:58)

I think for me the most important part of working with Maria Fidelis has been establishing that relationship really early on. As Clare mentioned, we've had it for years, but specifically around the T Levels, making sure that It's really built on trust. There's a really mutual understanding of what both of us are going to offer in this partnership, and that clear communication is established really early on. It’s made the consequent work so much easier because we've had that as a foundational basis for everything we've done. I think we've both been really clear in establishing what our wants and our needs for these placements are, and clearing up any slightly hazy areas.

And then I think from that, because we've established this really clear, great relationship, having relatively regular meetings so that we can keep ensuring that everyone is still on the same page. We're working to the same timelines. We've got the same expectations of what is going to happen and when has been really useful too.

Matching students to the placements available (0:00-0:54)

So in terms of our planning process, we're still in the very early days of actually setting these placements. We've got around 18 months until they come into the building.

Externally, I think things are going to start moving a lot quicker once the school have an idea of which students are going to be taking up the course, because we can then get stuck into the matching, which I think is likely going to be sort of informal interviews to understand the student's motivations, what their interests are, what they want to do in the future, so that we can match them to a placement that actually suits.

And then once we know what placements are going to go ahead next year, we can get into sort of the nitty gritty of the planning, fully supporting the supervisors once we know who's actually going to be able to contribute to this first wave of placements. In terms of the timetable, the plan is that the students are recruited over the next few months, and I then need to start thinking through the process of actually then matching them with the placements based on number of students, their interests.

Deciding which delivery model to use (0:55-1:29)

The delivery model we're going to be using is the block delivery. So we are planning in the second year of their course in autumn 2025, they will do a four week block before the October half term. They'll then have a one-week break and they'll come back and do the five-week block after the October half term.

That was decided for many reasons, with the school themselves and talking with the local council who have connections with other schools and organisations across the borough who've offered T levels. It was decided this model would work best because there's a benefit to the students getting really embedded into the Crick between those nine weeks.

Deciding whether to pay students (1:30-2:01)

So we made the decision for the nine-week block and we are also making the decision to pay our students. It's not compulsory. We've made the decision because the school we're working with is a state school, the school the children – young people, sorry – could have part-time jobs.

There are several reasons why we think that paying them is more equitable and what we should be doing as a larger organisation that has the budget. So what that one week break in the middle means is that they get to have their sort of paid time off because we're going to have to put them on a contract.

Leaving the detailed preparation for placements until later (2:02-3:04)

We have an established work experience programme, so we know from that that actually having day to day planning of the placements and the program itself, what students will do when they're here, it needs to happen quite a bit closer to when the placements are actually due to occur.

There can be so many changes in that time. Staff changes, bigger team changes where, you know, the actual things that that team does on a day-to-day basis can change so rapidly, that it doesn't make sense for us. And also we don't know which teams are actually going to be offering these students placements this year.

So I think it'll be probably more towards the end of the first year of the students’ course when the students have definitely been matched up, we know who's going where and we have a better idea of what skills and knowledge they're going to bring to their placements. I can then support the supervisors in planning that placement and the timetable of how much training are they going to need, what areas is this training going to need to happen, when are they going to be able to transition into business as usual? And what are those days actually going to look like using what we already know from the other placements that we regularly offer?

Running a pilot (0:00-1:01)

So in terms of how the programme might pan out in the future, it's very much a pilot to begin with but we have said and we've made a commitment that it will be a two-year pilot and we felt that was very important because when we come to host the first cohort of students in their year 13, by then for the school they will have already started their next group in year 12 that will be studying the T Level.

So we wanted to be really sure that we could give them that clarity and security and knowing that those students who are the second cohort would have access to placements, rather than putting them in a difficult position of recruiting the second year of their students without knowing that they had guaranteed placements.

Because we feel that's what this partnership is about. It's about that sort of honouring a guarantee of being able to place their students.

Growing the programme (1:02-2:15)

Thinking beyond the pilot, we'll see how the pilot goes. We may be able to expand the number and depending on whether we're successful with things like pipelining students into roles at the Crick, there may actually be internal demand to make that happen.

But as well as T Levels, we've also got a work experience programme and the Crick also helps students on sandwich placements and undergrad summer placements and other schemes like the 10,000 black interns project and we have our apprentices. So perhaps while some expansion to accommodate more T Level students is possible, it's got to happen in the context of not negatively affecting our ability to take those other students.

And what I'm interested in really is how we transition students through those different opportunities. So, for me, possibly expansion is more about moving students within opportunities rather than necessarily expanding to large numbers of students just coming through on T Levels.

Identifying opportunities for growth (2:16-3:22)

At the moment we're focusing very much on science because we are a big science institute. We have well over a thousand people in science roles here. But like any science institute, we've got a lot of other functions, business operations and others that would match other T Levels. So if we can show proof of concept and it's working with science, then other departments might want to get involved. But realistically, we don't have the scale in any of those other departments to do what we can do with science.

So, certainly for the foreseeable future, I think we will concentrate on science placements, and that's partly because for this particular T Level, the number of other organisations who can offer these placements is relatively small. The logistics of setting them up by nature of the environment that the children are entering is quite complex and so we're able to perhaps fill a gap that isn't going to be easy for other organisations to do.