Konnie Huq on how talking to teens about their future is vital

“When I was taking my GCSEs, I had no clue, really, about what I wanted to do,” she recalls. “And even my degree choice was sort of ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ – I’d done all science A-levels, and I didn’t want to go into sciences as a career, so I just chose to do economics. I’d never done economics before, I didn’t really even know what economics was!”

Huq now has two children of her own – Covey, who’s nearly 12, and Huxley, 10 – with the writer and TV presenter Charlie Brooker, and the kids are fast approaching the time when they’ll need to start thinking about what subjects they really enjoy at school, and if there’s any career paths they might like to follow.

It’s for that reason, and the fact that she could’ve done with some help navigating her own educational choices, that Huq, aged 48, has teamed up with another former Blue Peter presenter, Simon Thomas, to back Talking Futures, a national campaign and online resource that helps parents talk to teenagers about their future education and career options.

“A resource like this could have been such a helpful tool for when me and my peers were growing up,” Huq reflects.

“Basically, the campaign is all about talking to your young people about what it is they want to do in the future and what paths they want to go down. I’ve found from talking to my parental peers that lots of people aren’t actually aware of all the new education options available to children growing up – there’s so much more than when we were young, because we’re living in a different world, essentially.”

Huq explains that the Talking Futures website offers support to parents, and there’s a chatbot that tailors advice to each child’s unique circumstances.

“It just helps you to navigate what will suit them, because these secondary school years are pivotal to getting them on the right path to what they want to do after school and beyond,” she says. “Often, your whole life can go down a different pathway because you might not have realised something that was available to you. So it’s really important to have these conversations.”

She adds: “Your child’s future, it’s massive, but most people don’t even know what’s open to them. You know about GCSEs and then some do A-levels and some get a job. But it doesn’t have to be those pathways – there’s so many different options available.

“It’s such a common thing for a child not know what to do next, and as parents, we have a share in the responsibility for helping them go down the right pathway.”