School
Engagement
1 x basket full of benefits.
1 x trolley-load of training.
1 x shelf stocked with support.
We’ve got the receipts.
Engagement with schools
We’re so proud to support initiatives such as careers fairs, mock interviews, and personal development sessions across local schools, sixth forms, and colleges. Our wide range of engagement programmes includes raising awareness of hidden career opportunities, enhancing essential employability skills, and aligning with the Gatsby Benchmarks – all with the goal of helping young people become confident and career ready.
On the shop floor or behind the scenes, we’re all about helping people kickstart awesome careers they’ll love at Asda, so come see how we do it!
Asda Heroes
Encourage young people to become active citizens within their communities
Let's make a difference in the community and learn about the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
Overview of the programme
Asda Heroes is an inspiring, staff-led programme designed to empower young people to become confident changemakers within their communities.
Engaging half-termly on our virtual platform, pupils will use both practical resources and virtual content to explore real-world challenges such as food waste, plastic pollution, and fast fashion. They’ll be guided throughout by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the principles of People, Planet and Prosperity. This initiative supports schools to lead meaningful, hands-on projects like growing food, upcycling items, reducing waste, and supporting local citizens.
Why should your school participate?
Schools can align with the spirit of Gatsby as this programme strongly supports early careers-related learning. It builds awareness of the world of work, developing key skills like teamwork, problem-solving, and communication, encouraging aspiration and broadening horizons.
Targeted Cohort
Mainly directed at years 3, 4 & 5 nationally, but also ideal for SEND provisions, alternative provisions and pupil referral units due to the project-based learning approach.
Testimonial
“Our learners and staff thoroughly enjoy participating and engaging in the Asda Heroes programme. Throughout the programme, our learners engage in practical activities which support them to understand the SDGs, and the world of work.
It encourages our learners to engage in meaningful projects that make a real difference and positively impacts the people of our local community, and the planet. This supports our learners to get a deeper understanding of how to be a global citizen by helping others and the world around them; and prepares them for life beyond school”.
Asda Futures
Discover hidden careers, build employability skills, and become career ready
Let's discover hidden careers within Asda to help you feel empowered, career ready, and confident. Aspire to achieve a career by building positive relationships with professionals and understand a clear career pathway.
Overview of the programme
Asda Futures brings GCSE Product Design to life, giving Year 9 students the opportunity to respond to a real Buyer brief and experience the full product journey, from concept to market.
Through visits to Asda House, the team explore key areas such as sustainability, packaging, logistics and marketing. This directly supports the national curriculum’s aims around creative design, commercial awareness and ethical thinking. Alongside this, students build essential employability skills such as teamwork, confidence and problem-solving—helping them become ambitious, industry-ready learners.
Teams are then asked to present their products to a panel of judges at the end of their journey, with the winning team being crowned the Regional Champions!
Why should your school engage in this programme?
Asda Futures strongly supports all eight Gatsby Benchmarks by embedding real, meaningful employer engagement throughout the programme.
Targeted Cohort
This programme is aimed towards Year 9 pupils. This programme is based at Asda House in Leeds, so school teams need to be able to travel to us each half term.
Each school will have up to 12 places allocated per event.
We ask that at least 80% of the team is either SEND, disadvantaged, free school meal or from an ethnic minority background.
Testimonial
“It provides an inspiring experience for students, helping them to build essential teamwork skills by encouraging collaboration, active listening, and clear speaking, as well as developing strong problem-solving abilities throughout each activity”.
“One of the standout aspects is how it highlights “hidden” careers, allowing students to discover opportunities they may never have previously considered and giving them a clearer understanding of what they could pursue in the future”.
“The hands-on activities are particularly engaging, enabling students to challenge themselves, step out of their comfort zones, and grow in confidence through practical experiences”.
Asda Leaders
Develop leadership skills while solving real-life sustainable business problems
Let's develop your innovative thinking, grow your business mind and develop your employability skills. Throughout the year you will work with professionals from Asda to create a solution to a real-life business problem as well as becoming career ready and aware of future opportunities.
Overview of the programme
The Asda Leaders programme is a high-impact, real-world programme that brings GCSE and A-Level Business to life while inspiring future talent.
Students work on genuine challenges from Asda’s ESG strategy, applying their learning to build critical thinking, problem-solving and data analysis skills. They also gain valuable insight into retail careers and develop key employability skills.
Each team is supported by an Asda colleague who mentors them throughout, ensuring ideas are grounded in real business thinking and providing direct industry exposure.
The programme concludes with a final showcase in June, where teams present their solutions, a winner is selected, and students are given the opportunity to explore opportunities within Asda.
Why should your school engage in this programme?
Asda Leaders doesn’t just support academic success it develops confident, commercially aware and enterprising young people, ready to thrive in their future careers.
The Asda Leaders programme strongly aligns with the Gatsby Benchmarks, making it a powerful careers and curriculum-linked experience for schools and colleges.
Targeted Cohort
This programme is aimed towards Year 10 and 12 pupils who have an interest in business and potentially an interest in working within the retail sector as this will become a stepping stone onto early career opportunities.
Testimonial
“As teacher of A level Business is it always useful to allow students to engage with real practical applications of the world of work.
The Asda leaders programme has allowed our Year 12 students to investigate some of the external and internal challenges Asda face each year in their ESG report. They have been able to go beyond the A level Business specification, to solve real business problems for Asda. They have developed softer skills such as teamwork and communication. Also working alongside Asda mentors, has allowed them to develop industry standards of communication in emails and over Teams calls.”
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