Growth, not grades: Media must shout louder about futures beyond exams
Opinion
The marketing sector has no reason to be built on school results. We have a duty to represent the richly diverse population in both our internal teams and the work we produce.
When I took annual leave to help my daughter, Lucy, revise for this year’s GCSEs, I expected a refresher in oxbow lakes and the reactivity series. Instead, I got a crash course in just how brutal the exam system has become.
Reforms introduced in 2015 have made modern GCSEs significantly tougher than in the past, swapping modular assessments for all-encompassing end-of-year papers. We’ve been revising since before Christmas and now Lucy will spend 33 hours sitting exams over a hectic six-week period.
There’s also a prevailing mindset that “if you fail your GCSEs, you won’t be able to get a good job”, so pupils worry that their achievements here won’t just define their college places but their entire life prospects.
It’s no surprise that more than three-quarters of teachers and school leaders now report exam-related anxiety and mental-health issues in their Year 11s. Looking at Lucy, I’m surprised it isn’t more. She’s a sporty girl who is in need of daylight, a break from Deliveroo and to get out of her revision pyjamas!
After seeing her stress up close, I returned to the office with three important lessons:
• There’s far too much pressure put on the 650,000-plus students sitting GCSEs each year, whether that’s from society, parents or the pupils themselves.
• Many GCSEs follow structured learning and assessment patterns. This rigidity can limit young people’s individual expression, exploration and creativity — increasingly crucial skills in an AI-driven world.
• The best people in the media and marketing industry didn’t ace physics — they mastered people skills and problem-solving in every walk of life.
Time to rewrite the rules
As employers, we can help promote a better, more varied future for young talent. How? By embracing alternative career paths and shaping new routes into our industries.
Talent isn’t about grades, it’s about skills — especially ones that can’t always be assessed by exams. The marketing sector has no reason to be built on school results. We have a duty to represent the richly diverse population in both our internal teams and the work we produce for our clients.
After all, we can’t speak to all audiences if we don’t have a workforce that embodies society and lived experience
We also mustn’t forget the weight and influence our industry wields. Advertising accounts for 4% of the UK’s gross value and supports over 1.7m jobs (as much as 5% of the country’s employment). So if any sector can be the powerhouse that leads change, it’s us.
Thankfully, we’re seeing real momentum from initiatives already challenging the status quo. Programmes like Global Academy, WYK Digital, Brixton Finishing School and University Academy 92 increasingly help break down barriers for under-represented talent, providing practical work experience without strict academic entry.
Our own Thrive apprenticeship scheme has no requirements for age, experience or qualifications — all that’s needed is a hunger to learn and grow.
After all, you can’t learn media intuition or strategic creativity from a school textbook. You build it through experimentation, feedback, failure and resilience. And many talented young people are ready to bring that zest. They just need a door to be held open (and to find the door in the first place!).
Meet the apprentices redefining success
After thinking about Lucy’s stress levels, I talked to some of our apprentices to get their perspective. Their points of view and paths were inspiring.
Take Bradley Potter, one of our 2023 apprentice intakes, now SEO executive at Wavemaker’s Manchester office.
After becoming a full-time family carer aged 13, he missed his GCSE exams and took on roles in sales, mechanics and even a successful YouTube channel. Then the King’s Trust led him to WYK’s free digital marketing programme, which inspired his application for the Thrive scheme.
Since then, he’s risen up the ranks to win Apprentice of the Year at the 2024 MPA Inspiration Awards.
Meanwhile, Yuvraj Sidhu, one of our 2024 media planning apprentices in London, moved to Global Academy after missing out on studying media at his local school. It opened industry doors, such as live practice briefs from ad agencies and application on to Thrive.
After presenting the concept for a P&O Cruises-sponsored TV show, Famous Fugitives, at the end of his media essentials course (along with his cohort), Yuvraj secured an apprenticeship and has since finished second in the first round of The Media Leader’s Media Mind inter-agency quiz.
A more varied future
What strikes me most about these apprentices — and their career paths — is the vital skills they’ve learned outside the classroom.
While many of us may have been shy at school or struggled to get the support we needed, there are also straight-A students (or should I say 9s!) who have been institutionalised by the school structure and the rigid expectations to conform.
None of these arrangements sets up our future generation for success in industries that require comfort in the ambiguous, critical thinking and relationship-building as standard.
Instead, apprenticeship programmes and real work experience can provide everything that education can’t: truly personal tutors, regular Q&A opportunities and even soft skills like office etiquette.
We need to think about these benefits when we’re building our programmes, not ape the more formal learning programmes of old. Because when it comes to media, growth beats grades every single time.
So how can we encourage more Year 11s to see beyond sixth forms and take control of their futures? Who better to ask than the apprentices themselves…
Bradley says: “Media companies need to make it more widely known that these opportunities are available. Whenever I visit colleges to give talks on my career path, I get countless messages afterwards from students asking how they can apply too. Working in media allows all of us to achieve real change if we use our voices wisely; so why not focus those voices on championing under-represented young talent?”
And for those pupils sitting high-stakes GCSEs?
Over to Yuvraj: “Whatever you do now doesn’t dictate your future. Instead, your success will come from how you approach work and your attitude to learning. A ‘can-do’ outlook is always the best way forward. Because, after all, you can.”
Simply inspirational. Forget the reactivity series — these are the words we all need to remember.
Katie Lee is chief operating officer at Wavemaker UK