St Augustine’s Priory: Women and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

St Augustine’s Priory: Women and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

28 March 2019

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution, was at the forefront of everyone’s mind at the biennial Careers Evening at St Augustine’s Priory, Ealing Catholic Independent School for girls, this week. St Augustine’s Priory has been sending its pupils to the best universities in the world for decades and their Careers Evenings provide a vital role in helping girls to decide the path that is best for them.

The evening saw representatives from a wide range of professions, including many recent leavers from St Augustine’s Priory, joining parents and girls to share their experiences and insights and give advice on entering diverse careers – from architecture to space and telecommunications engineering to architecture via medicine, finance and accounting, journalism, law, acting, quantity surveying, academia and many others, the St Augustine’s Priory pupils and their parents had a vast array of professions to explore and discover. Our keynote speaker, Katrina Finucane, a Quantity Surveyor, spoke about the changing way women are seen in the construction industry and how she thought of following this career path after attending a Careers Evening at St Augustine’s Priory.

The theme of the Fourth Industrial Revolution ran through the whole evening. From a film produced by the Sixth Form highlighting the four industrial revolutions, the evening emphasised the belief that the pupils at St Augustine’s Priory must be ready to embrace the future and show adaptability and flexibility in their approach to careers.

Patrick Collinson in The Guardian on Monday 25th March wrote, ‘About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected… Higher levels of education protect workers from automation. The ONS [Office for National Statistics] said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below, while 1.2% were held by those who had been through higher education or university.’

The St Augustine’s Priory Careers Evening is just one strand of preparing girls for the worlds of higher education and work, to enable them to embrace the world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. For, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it’. Women are going to change the way we see the future!

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