Host a student with Chapter
Give a young person a real look at the world of work - on your terms. A day, a project, or a full week. We handle the consent, the checks and the chasing.
Careers & Enterprise Company employer survey, November 2025. The gap between the first number and the second is not goodwill. It is the shape of the ask.
Who gets left out, and why
Four in five work-experience placements are arranged by the student or their family, and most staff will tell you that family connections are what drive the inequality. A young person whose parents know a solicitor spends a week in a law firm. A young person whose parents do not spends the week in the school library. That is the gap this page exists to close: one business saying yes is one student who gets the same start.
It does not have to be two weeks
Statutory guidance from June 2026 asks schools to build five days' worth of experience across Years 10 and 11, spread flexibly and across more than one employer if that works better. So the shape is genuinely yours to choose:
A half-day or day visit
A tour, a talk, and a look at what the job is really like hour to hour.
Two days
Long enough to sit with a team and try something for real.
A live brief or project
One genuine piece of work, in your office or theirs, ending in a pitch.
A full week
The classic block, if that is what suits your business.
What the school does for you
Parental consent, and the safeguarding side
The school collects consent from home, checks the student is ready, and stays the point of contact for anything that goes wrong. You are never asked to be in loco parentis.
The paperwork, once
Your insurance details, a short risk assessment and your named supervisor are saved against your business, not the placement. The second school inherits them. You should never be asked for the same certificate twice.
A plan for the days themselves
A third of employers who say no say it is because they cannot picture what a young person would actually do. Chapter gives you a ready-made plan for your sector - a week in a practice, a two-day build, a live brief - which you edit rather than write.
Ninety seconds at the end
One short form: did they turn up, what did they do well, one sentence for them. It goes back to the student as recognition and to the school as the evidence an inspector asks for.
The insurance question, answered
Your existing employers' liability policy almost certainly covers a work-experience student already: the insurance industry's own guidance treats them as an employee for the duration, at no extra premium. You are not buying anything, and there is no new policy to arrange. All a school needs is confirmation that your cover is live - an insurer, a policy number and a date, entered once and reused everywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need extra insurance to host a work-experience student?
Almost certainly not. A standard employers' liability policy already treats a work-experience student as an employee for the duration, at no extra premium - that is the Association of British Insurers' own position, and it holds with any ABI or Lloyd's member. Chapter asks you to confirm your policy is live, which is a policy number and a date, not a new product. For a placement longer than two weeks the ABI suggests a courtesy word with your insurer, and we prompt you at the right moment.
How long does a placement have to be?
As long as suits you. Statutory guidance from June 2026 asks schools to build up five days' worth of experience across Years 10 and 11, spread flexibly and with more than one employer if that is easier. A single day, a two-day block or a project all count. The traditional two-week slab is the thing the guidance moved away from, and it is the thing most employers tell us they cannot do.
What about safeguarding and DBS checks?
You do not need DBS checks for your staff to host a student. Since 1 September 2026, supervising a young person on more than three days in a 30-day period counts as regulated activity, and because a school cannot run a check on someone else's employee, the law asks you instead to confirm that the person supervising is not on the children's barred list. In Chapter that is one tick on one form, with the wording written out for you.
How much work is this for us?
One form at the start, a plan you edit rather than write, and ninety seconds at the end. Everything else - consent, the risk conversation, checking the student is prepared, chasing anything missing - sits with the school. 75% of employers told the CEC that easier working with schools would increase their participation; that sentence is the entire design brief for this product.
Do we have to take a student every year?
No. You say yes or no to every single ask, and you can tell us the times of year that never work. If you would rather other schools nearby did not contact you, leave that box unticked - a school only sees you if you have agreed to it.
Can we offer an apprenticeship to someone who impresses us?
Yes, and the feedback form asks. Tell the school you would consider them for an apprenticeship, a T Level placement, part-time work or your talent pool, and they will raise it with the student and their family. Nothing about the student reaches you unless the family has agreed - the flag is a prompt for a conversation, not a lead.
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