A lot of employers would like to support schools and provide work experience but are put off by the staff time it takes to keep the students occupied and safe for a week or two weeks.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
The Institute of Chartered Accountants have developed a work experience toolkit that provides sufficient accounting activities to keep a work experience student fully occupied for the week, with a minimum of your input.
These are available for free for members and can be downloaded for free from the ICAEW website. All that is required is the submission of your details (so the Institute can keep a record of how many, and who, have used the kits) and you will be forwarded to a page where you can download the packs.
You can access the page to download the kits by clicking here
If you are unable to do this, please contact us directly.
There are two separate packs in the toolkit:
Student pack
This contains:
- A suggested training plan for a 5 days w/e period, referenced to the activities in the toolkit;
- Induction questionnaires for w/e obtained in both practice and industry;
- Background information on business structures, accounting records and financial statements;
- Guidance on how VAT works;
- A series of simple accounting activities, using a case study, requiring completion of a payments analysis, receipts analysis, petty cash book, bank reconciliation, completion of a fixed asset register, VAT Account, ending up with a Trial Balance, P&L A/C and a Balance Sheet. Pro-formas are given in order to make it easy;
- A glossary of accounting terms and a simple accounting question bank.
Employer pack
This contains:
- Guidance on how to use the Toolkit
- A checklist for your induction and briefing to students on w/e, including health & safety issues;
- Suggested answers to all of the Student activities and question banks.
The accounting records can be completed by using the hard copy pro-formas in the toolkit, but we recommend that you get the students to draft these as excel spreadsheets. This not only provides further activities to keep them occupied, they develop invaluable spreadsheet skills.
By providing work experience to schools, or even to those on holiday or having just left school, you get a chance to identify promising students who could be potential future employees.
