Breaking barriers to employment with education and training - Natalie Doherty, Aneeka Zarar, Laura Else

There's a game Natalie Doherty likes to play when she meets young people on one of the Source Skills Academy's programmes.

They have this image indoctrinated into them about the type of person who is a Director of Quality, Curriculum and Innovation, she says. And they're often shocked by her career journey from dance to director – but hearing it makes the idea of a senior job more accessible to them.

Doherty, whose father wanted her to be an accountant, "wasn't the conventional student" at school, she says. After studying dance and sport she began a career as a dancer which took her all over the world. Her career developed into running major sport and cultural events before she "broke into education" and she's worked in both a formal and community context in the education sector for 15 years. Today we discuss:

• Does education prepare people adequately for the workplace?
• Confounding the expectations that society, schools, families often make of people.
• Transferable skills from dance and sport which helped Natalie overcome brick walls and be resilient in the face of knocks on her career journey.
• What those brick walls and knocks were.
• How the Source's traineeship programmes help young people develop and, crucially, apply their skills.

Also on today's show: Aneeka Zarar says she has transformed her life thanks to The Source Skills Academy’s Traineeship programme. Aneeka, 18, now has a full-time job she loves at Yorkshire Accommodation Bureau Ltd in Rotherham. She and her manager Laura Else talk about how the experience worked for Aneeka and the business.

Timings and links:

• 0 - 3:18 introduction,
• 3:18 interview with Natalie Doherty, Director of Quality, Curriculum and Innovation, the Source Skills Academy,
• 30:40 Aneeka Zarar and Laura Else, Yorkshire Accommodation Bureau,
• 43:27 If you run a business in Yorkshire and the Humber which sells online, the ten free of charge Digitise Your Exports (DYE) events could help you to increase their online sales. Details.
• 46:01 Wrapping up.