Rachael’s blog: Face-to-face support – but no guidance

In a Lords debate this week Schools Minister Lord Hill accepted that there was a case for the provision of face-to-face careers guidance to young people.

He said: “We will place a clear expectation on schools that they should secure face-to-face careers guidance where it is the most suitable support, in particular for disadvantaged children and those who have special needs or are learners with learning difficulties and disabilities”.

However, while it appears the argument for face-to-face guidance is being won, Lord Hill fails to clarify how this clear expectation, even if it is spelt out in statutory guidance, will ensure the professionalism or impartiality of any careers advice schools manage to find the money to buy in.

The challenge for schools is immense as a recent TES article explained:

“Headteachers are experiencing new requirements placed upon them to ensure young people are making the right choices and moving on to their next destination. New accountability frameworks, new destination measures and new inspections arrangements are impacting on the school and college agenda….

“The reality is that all schools are now faced with the difficult task of having responsibility for guiding their pupils to make successful transitions and achieve success. Do they go it alone or find other ways of building knowledge and support for themselves and their students?”

That’s a key question and one that leaves a gap where there should be co-ordination and structure.

It can’t be right to have numerous highly qualified careers advisers who were part of the Connexions service now on the scrap heap, or facing it, as the provision of careers guidance switches to schools that may not have the necessary expertise to provide it. Yet these advisers have the specialist knowledge youngsters need to navigate their way through the practical, but often daunting, steps towards career choice.  

Now what? Who’s going to join the dots?

Prospects, (of which FEdS is part) is a leading supplier of education, employment and training services, whose expertise includes careers advice for young people and adults. It recently carried out a survey of 105 employers who collectively account for 1,800,000 employees across the UK. It found that: 

• 81% of employers said schools do not adequately prepare students with the skills they need for work 
• 85% of employers felt schools do not offer pupils a well-informed perspective on employment as well as higher education 
• 88% of employers thought teachers do not have sufficient industry knowledge to advise students on a career in their business sector.  Yet this is what is proposed in the Education Bill. 

Prospects’ Executive Chairman Ray Auvray said: “We are in a real danger of the system collapsing in chaos with a dysfunctional youth labour market.” He said that unless the Government could be persuaded to change direction we faced:

• many (most?) young people making career decisions with limited or no professional advice
• no job brokerage service for 16-19 year olds
• rapidly rising numbers of NEETs (not in education, employment or training)
• a legacy of wrong choices about education, training and higher education that is wasteful of individual talent and reduces national wealth

Few would say that what we had before was perfect or always adequate – but at least young people had someone and somewhere to turn to. The Government urgently needs to explain and support its own proposals more effectively – and it would do well to try to understand the impact they will have in the real world.