From insight visit to work experience: Bow School opens a route into insurance

04 Sep 2004

Bow School and Oneglobal Broking built a progressive partnership that introduced 26 Year 10 pupils to insurance and enabled two students to complete a three-day placement, with the school and employer taking increasing ownership of the relationship.

Insurance is a major Central London industry, but its breadth can be difficult for young people to see. Oneglobal Broking wanted to work with a local school, increase awareness of the sector and respond to a workforce it described as ageing and still largely white and male.

The Central London Careers Hub identified Bow School in Tower Hamlets. The school had a higher-than-average proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals, and its learners were not already accessing experiences in insurance.

Together, the partners designed a progressive workplace journey: begin by helping a larger group investigate the industry, then create a smaller opportunity for interested students to apply their learning through work experience.

Starting with insight

On 12 May 2026, 26 Year 10 pupils visited Oneglobal’s London office. The day included a CV workshop, interview and assessment-centre activities, an introduction to insurance, networking, and a session on artificial intelligence and its likely influence on future applications and jobs.

The mix of practical recruitment advice and sector insight made the visit more than an office tour. Students could see the range of roles inside the business, practise skills employers use to select candidates and begin to understand how a global insurance market operates on their doorstep.

A partnership that began to sustain itself

Two pupils who attended the visit then completed a three-day placement from 30 June to 2 July. They explored the business in more depth, visited the Lloyd’s of London insurance marketplace, and drafted a news article to demonstrate what they had learned.

An important change happened behind the scenes: Bow School’s Careers Leader and Oneglobal arranged the placements directly. The Hub had introduced the partners and supported the initial plan, but the school and employer were now negotiating the next stage themselves, a useful sign that the relationship could continue beyond a single activity.

Between spring and summer Compass returns, the school’s response to a non-scoring Gatsby Benchmark 6 question on meaningful work experience for pupils eligible for free school meals moved from ‘none’ to ‘overwhelming majority (76-90%)’. The One global partnership formed part of that wider improvement, although the school-level figure cannot attribute the change to this activity alone.

Building a fuller journey

The team’s next priority is stronger learner-level measurement. The Future Skills Questionnaire was not completed before the activity, so the evidence shows delivery, progression and partnership ownership rather than a measured change in individual interest or confidence.

The clearest sign of sustainability was practical: the school and employer arranged the placements directly, turning an introduced contact into a working partnership.

For future cohorts, distributing the questionnaire early and introducing insurance in Year 9 would create a clearer baseline and give pupils more time to build knowledge before applying for workplace experiences.

The partnership shows how an insight visit can become the first stage of a coherent journey. When a school and employer share ownership, a single encounter can lead to deeper experience, and a sector that once felt unfamiliar can become a credible option.