Careers Wales has expanded its popular Careers City resource, designed to engage primary school learners in Years 5 and 6 with the diverse world of work, with the addition of two exciting new career paths – TikTok Shop Entrepreneur and Volcanologist. Careers City is an interactive map that helps young learners explore different careers and opportunities available to them through engaging animations and supporting classroom materials. Equipped with supporting classroom materials and teacher notes, the resource will help teachers to include careers and work-related experiences (CWRE) in their curriculum.
Through clicking on buildings and features on the map that represent different sectors, learners will be taken to an animation featuring an ‘unusual’ job within that particular sector, such as a teddy bear repair technician, a glaciologist, or police drone pilot.
Each animation will provide learners with age-appropriate information about the job, including what it involves, as well as the interests, skills or qualities that will be useful to be able to do the job, and subjects they might want to study to follow that career.
The new additions from the retail and life sciences sectors are detailed below:
- The TikTok shop entrepreneur role demonstrates a nontraditional retail environment, where businesses can thrive through social media platforms. TikTok Shop allows users to buy products directly while watching TikTok LIVE videos, browsing in-feed videos on the ‘For You’ page, clicking on brand profiles’ pinned shopping badges, or through the new ‘Shop’ tab.
- The volcanologist role immerses learners in the exciting world of life sciences and geology. Volcanologists study volcanoes all over the world, analysing their patterns, rock samples and ash all to figure out when they might erupt and help prevent casualties when they do.
The sectors featured include those regarded as ‘priority sectors’ by Regional Skills Partnerships in Wales.
The full list of sectors and jobs include:
- Agriculture – pet psychologist
- Construction – rope access worker
- Creative arts, media and culture – teddy bear repair technician
- Digital technology – AI whisperer
- Education – art therapist
- Energy, water and waste – glaciologist
- Finance, insurance and legal – financial crime inspector
- Health – genetic technologist
- Manufacturing – protein expression scientist
- Public services – police drone pilot
- Tourism, hospitality, sport and leisure – bungee jump instructor
- Transport and storage – yacht broker
- Retail – TikTok shop entrepreneur
- Life sciences – volcanologist
Mark Owen, head of services to stakeholders at Careers Wales, said: “We’re thrilled to be adding these two exciting jobs to the Careers City resource. The TikTok Shop Entrepreneur and Volcanologist are fantastic examples of how diverse and dynamic the world of work can be.
“Careers City has been designed to spark interest and discussion with learners at primary school level and encourage them to think about jobs that might interest them.
“As a mandatory cross-cutting theme within Curriculum for Wales, it’s really important that teachers are supported with embedding this theme into their lesson plans and wider curriculum.
“We’re encouraging primary school teachers across Wales to look at how they can use this map within their own classrooms and help broaden the horizons and raise the aspirations of learners.”
Careers City has been named a finalist by the Career Development Institute in this year’s UK Development Awards for “Use of Technology in Career Development”.
More information about Careers City can be found on the Careers Wales website.
