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Geoff Dunn: Our primary school is situated in an area of social deprivation on the north coast of Northern Ireland. Children come to school, they enjoy school life, but the deprivation has an impact on their outlook in life and as part of what I believe the school's focus should be is we want to create aspiration and create hope where they have this innate sense of desire to enter the world of employment.

We try to make links between the curriculum and the world of employment and it's done subtly, it's done daily and it's fairly easy to do, but it just means that the teachers have to bear in mind, this is an important aspect for us to be able to create the sense of aspiration.

There have been challenges along the way. One of the things I suppose was the lack of time to really think this through, what has really helped is by looking at the topic that the children are learning and then taking time to think, where does this lead? How does this impact the world of work? If you don't ask yourself that question as a teacher you're kind of missing the end game I feel. It's actually about creating time for staff to see the link and to be able to consider the links. So we have nurses come into school. We have the fire brigade coming into school. We have IT technicians come into school and they work hands on with the children and give them examples of what they do in their work.

Julie-Anne Lafferty: We want children to take ownership of their learning and we want them to be creative, having a small business in a classroom is a wonderful way of doing this. I, as the teacher, take a back seat, I give them advice, but it's theirs, it's their business, it's their job to make it successful. It's challenging, it's not all rosy, it's hard work. They all get fully involved and it doesn't matter if it's not one group's idea, they all come together, they all pull in and to see the excitement, the motivation and the joy that children have whenever they succeed is wonderful.

The children are going home and they are talking to their parents. I'm good at maths so I could work in finance or I'm really good at art and I could work in advertising, and it gets the ball rolling quite early in their wee lives.

Geoff Dunn: The 'Primary Futures' event was a very successful event which we held in school, where we had five volunteers from the world of employment. The children had to ask questions to try to guess what the volunteers were in their roles. They were only allowed to say yes or no. Following that we had about fifty other volunteers. So the children themselves got to find out about, probably about twelve or thirteen different jobs on that day. It was very exciting. The children were thoroughly engaged and actually the parents and the staff and the other volunteers who helped with the rest of the day, they were very engaged, also. And it was done in a really good fun way where there was a real sense of buzz and anticipation.

Prior to the 'Primary Futures' event we found it quite difficult to engage parents and the 'Primary Futures' event allowed us to invite parents in to see first-hand what was going on in school. They could clearly see the enthusiasm, which the children had for the event, but also for employment.

Ruth Sterling: The 'Primary Futures' event just helped us as parents to see that we are not limited to one career that we've chosen back when we were eighteen. We can change careers, we can change within roles, within our jobs and we can encourage our children to perhaps just pick an area that they are interested and move forward in that and show them the careers that are available within that.

Geoff Dunn: It takes a little bit of getting your head around, trying to get so many different volunteers to come to school on that particular day. It is such a worthwhile event that actually all of the work you put in prior to it, to be honest you forget about it whenever it's over.

About two years ago I met with the provost of Ulster University to try to link our school and the university. University is less than about one mile's drive from this school. So I felt that, here is a real potential for children who, typically, will never both go to university. What can we do to actually get them inside and to experience the world of university life? Whenever I met with the provost it was wonderful how they were so open to primary school children coming in and experiencing life at university. The outcome, actually, is in a mindset, a change of mindset and also a philosophy for the child they think that actually, I can, I'm going to do this. I can have a good go at being what I want to be.

Ruth Sterling: I think it's made our kids more aware of the variety of careers that are available to them. And that there's no limits on what they can do. There's no limitations on them because of what their parents have done as careers or where they've come from, anything like that. They're all encouraged that they can reach for the sky and they can get there, if they want to.

Geoff Dunn: My three top tips would be to first of all go for it, don't hang about like I did for two or three or four years before I actually got stuck in. Always having this notion that some day I would. Go for it, determined yourself that you're going to do it. Secondly, I would say, use the template has that template. And the final one I would say is for teaching staff think to link. Link what you are doing in the classroom to the world of employment.