Government breaks impartial advice and guidance promise

Speaking at the second reading of the bill in the House of Lords on Tuesday (2 June), Baroness Blackstone described the bill's clause on IAG as "wholly inadequate".

This is because the bill permits schools to consider what is in "the best interests" of a child when giving careers advice.

She said: "All pupils should have the right to know the full range of options and their teachers should not prejudge their best interests."

Blackstone said there is a danger that teachers will not tell pupils about vocational qualifications.

Vocational qualifications must not be perceived as a low-status solution for educational failures, she said.

Meanwhile former education secretary, Lord Baker of Dorking, criticised the bill for establishing a "burdensome bureaucracy of immense complexity".

He said: "It is a ragbag, a mishmash, a thing of shreds and patches pasted together by a tired department at the fag end of a government."

Baroness Morris of Bolton also argued that the bill legislates for the creation of too many complicated, unnecessary quangos, such as the new Young People's Learning Agency.

She said: "Explaining how they will all link up with each other and with local and national government would require an organogram of which Heath Robinson would be proud."