Careers switch

What is changing in the provision of careers guidance to young people in England from September?
In a nutshell, the duty to provide careers advice and guidance to young people will pass from local authorities to schools, as set down in the Education Act 2011. There is no funding to accompany the duty. The government says schools should meet the costs of provision from their overall budgets, including the pupil premium.

The onus was on local authorities to provide this service from April 2008 – before this, careers guidance was the responsibility of the 43 nationally funded Connexions Partnerships, launched in 2001.

Connexions offered careers advice alongside other forms of advice and guidance. It aimed to serve all young people, but with a particular focus on those who were not in education, employment or training (Neet). The transfer to schools separates the provision of universal careers guidance from the provision of wider ranging targeted advice for vulnerable young people.

What sort of careers advice and guidance are schools obliged to deliver?
From September, schools will have to provide “impartial” and “independent” careers advice and guidance for pupils in years 9 to 11 (13- to 16-year-olds), although a current government consultation is gathering views on whether this duty should be extended to comprise all pupils from the start of year 8 until they turn 18. 

The emphasis of the statutory guidance that accompanies the legislation is very much on letting a school decide on the kind of careers advice and guidance that would best suit its pupils. While schools are obliged to ensure that there is an element of advice and guidance that comes from an “external” source, the duty could potentially be met by providing pupils with access to the new, all-age National Careers Service website (www.nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk) and helpline.

Schools are obliged to provide only face-to-face advice and guidance if they deem this to be “the most suitable” support for their particular pupils. The guidance suggests that face-to-face support might be particularly appropriate for children from disadvantaged backgrounds or those who have special educational needs, learning difficulties or disabilities. But it is up to head teachers to make that decision.

The lack of a specific duty to offer independent face-to-face guidance has angered some professionals, who argue that schools can have vested interests. The Association of Colleges, for example, produced a report earlier this year showing that half of schools with their own sixth forms are providing GCSE pupils with “poor, limited or no access” to information about courses available in other local further education or sixth form colleges.

The guidance does suggest various activities that schools might choose to adopt, such as mentoring, workplace visits, work experience, work shadowing, enterprise clubs, employer talks and links with local higher education institutions. Nearly a third of English secondary schools have signed up to the Inspiring the Future campaign, launched this July. Run by the Education and Employers Taskforce, schools can register their desire to have volunteers from the world of work come in to mentor or talk, and potential volunteers can match themselves with schools online.

The form that careers guidance takes is set to vary considerably from school to school. This can be seen as a good thing, as schools react to the needs of their particular pupils, or a bad thing, with provision becoming patchy across the country. “This is not a level playing field, it is a real postcode lottery,” says Sarah Finnegan-Dehn, president of the Institute of Career Guidance. “The careers provision you get depends on where you live, and the school’s priority and budget. Our major concern remains that face-to-face career guidance will not be available to many young people who need it.”

Who will be ensuring the quality of careers guidance?
Schools inspectorate Ofsted will continue to look at careers guidance provision as part of a school inspection, but will not inspect specifically against the statutory guidance. A thematic review of careers provision in schools, to be undertaken in 2013, will gather information through routine inspections and specific survey visits to schools. Schools and careers guidance practitioners hope the resulting report will clarify the standard to which careers guidance should be provided.

“If Ofsted goes into a school and someone says: ‘Our careers provision is that everyone has a PSHE lesson where we make them aware of the National Careers Service website’, does that mean the school has covered everything it needs to?” says Steve Stewart, chair of trade association Careers England. “At present, nobody knows.”

In any case, there is scepticism about the extent to which the careers guidance element of inspections will motivate schools to provide a good offer. Jon Richards, senior national officer for education at Unison, says: “After the thematic review, which is specifically looking at careers, the heat may be off. There is ever more pressure on Ofsted to inspect more things.”

If schools do decide to commission external agencies or individuals to provide face-to-face advice, they can either do so independently or join forces with other schools in consortia or partnerships. There are no restrictions regarding who they commission; the guidance states that schools “can” commission “qualified careers professionals”, but they are not obliged to. Staff that work for the all-age National Careers Service, on the other hand, do have to be qualified. Finnegan-Dehn says this is of “great concern”. “Older people who use the National Careers Service will have the benefit of professionally qualified careers advisers,” she says. “Why is this right not extended to young people in schools?”

However, if schools do want to ensure they are commissioning quality guidance, there are a number of accreditations they can look for. Earlier this year, the Careers Profession Alliance launched the national Register of Career Development Professionals, open to professionals with graduate qualifications in careers guidance or the equivalent. Careers advisers with NVQ level 4 are eligible for conditional registration, on the understanding they reach graduate level in two years. Registration is voluntary, but skills minister John Hayes has said he would like 50 per cent of career development professionals to sign up by April 2015. The alliance is also working on the development of a professional membership organisation for careers professionals, the Career Development Institute.

When it comes to commissioning organisations, schools can look for the agencies that meet the government’s “matrix standard”, a quality hallmark for providers of careers information that was revamped earlier this year. Providers aiming to meet the standard are assessed against a range of criteria, including service delivery, quality improvement, resources and leadership and management. The organisation behind the matrix standard, Emqc, is providing schools with access to information about accredited organisations.

Some argue it is ironic that the careers profession itself is in the process of raising the bar when it comes to accreditation and qualifications, at a time when those commissioning guidance are free to ignore such marks of professionalism. “Just when the qualifications you need to be a registered professional are going up, opportunities and wage rates for people are going down,” says Stewart.

What role will local authorities have under the new system?
Under the statutory guidance, local authorities retain a duty to support those 13- to 19-year-olds not in education, employment or training, rising to 25 for young people with learning disabilities. The guidance states that councils should also support the “most vulnerable young people” and those at risk of becoming disengaged from education or work. However, it is not specific about who these vulnerable children might be – they could include looked-after children, young carers, young offenders, young mothers, as well as children who are in school but might be truanting.

Local authorities are expected to fund this work via the early intervention grant, a non-ringfenced sum that is also used to fund a range of activities including Sure Start centres, free nursery places for disadvantaged two-year-olds, targeted mental health in schools and short breaks for disabled children.

How local authorities support young disengaged people into education and training will vary across the country, with some contracting out and others delivering services in-house. To ensure young people do not slip through the net, schools and local authorities will have to work closely together to identify them early on.

The Local Government Association (LGA)says this is already happening in areas such as East Sussex, where the local authority has worked with schools to develop a set of indicators to identify young people who may be at risk of disengagement, in order to provide early support and keep them in learning. Local authorities will also continue to record and track all young people’s post-16 participation in education and training through the local Client Caseload Information System.

Local authorities are also supporting schools to take on their new role, in some cases by providing packages of careers support that schools can buy into, or by signposting schools to quality external careers providers. The LGA is working with a number of councils to identify the various support models and will publish its findings in October.

What is the role of the National Careers Service in all this?
The National Careers Service, launched in April, is the government’s scheme for everyone above the age of 13. It comprises a website and helpline, with face-to-face support available for those aged 19 and over, via community walk-in centres and co-location in Jobcentre Plus sites. Young people receiving benefits will also be able to access face-to-face support.

The government is also backing a new website, Plotr (www.plotr.co.uk), which goes live later this summer. Funded by the Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the private sector, the site aims to “complement” the National Careers Service offer and be “the definitive resource” for young people, according to a Cabinet Office spokeswoman.

Plotr aims to provide careers advice and guidance through a social networking platform, including information from the National Careers Service, and is supported by businesses such as Starbucks and Serco. The site will allow young people to explore different careers, education, training and volunteering opportunities via videos, virtual tours and the like, and will match young people to relevant opportunities when appropriate.

Schools will be able to use the National Careers Service and Plotr as part of their careers offering, and in the school holidays, the websites and helpline may be the only way for most children to access careers guidance. From September, children under the age of 13 and those over 16 who do not come under the obligation of local authorities will have no guaranteed careers service apart from these options.

Unison’s Richards comments: “There is a limit on what a web-based service can deliver with no one to interpret for a young person or challenge their pre-conceived ideas.”

What impact will these changes have on young people?
Sarah Safo is a member of the Centrepoint Parliament, a group of young people elected by their peers in hostels who aim to speak up for homeless young people and influence policy. She says: “Face-to-face support is vital because young people may not be confident in making their career choice. An adviser can engage with them and advise on the best situation. Young people now don’t know where to go to get support – not everyone is in school.”

Centrepoint Parliament is campaigning for more access to face-to-face careers guidance. The young people have launched a petition (www.centrepoint.org.uk/ninerooms) and are meeting with local authorities and government ministers. Leoncha Leavy, participation manager
at Centrepoint, says: “Young people felt strongly about the dismantling of Connexions. Lots of young people used Connexions to go to, not just for advice about careers, but about homelessness as well.”

Careers and education professionals are worried that young people across the board will be affected. They say that while local authorities will still be obliged to provide services for those who are more vulnerable, there could be difficulties in identifying these young people, and that more advantaged young people might miss out on services altogether. “This will also impact on more able young people,” says Stewart. “It is not an ability issue – some young people might not be the brightest, but are very clear on what they want to do, while others may need more guidance.” Stewart predicts a rise in “the number of kids on the wrong courses who drop out and don’t achieve”.

Are schools ready to take on this new duty?
It varies. A survey by the Institute of Career Guidance (ICG) in February found that one in three schools had yet to decide on how they were going to meet their statutory duty. According to Careers England, not much has moved on since then: “Our feedback is, crudely, that a third of schools are buying a service from professionally qualified individuals or companies – although of that third, no one is buying at the same level as was provided through local authorities. A third say they will get someone in-house to do it and a third have not made a decision,” says Stewart.

Unison’s Richards concurs that the picture is mixed: “Not everyone is on top of things or aware of what is expected or the duties of commissioning. How can you make that judgement if careers guidance is not your expertise? It is a huge leap in the dark for schools.”

The ICG has been working with schools to help them understand how to commission careers guidance and the kinds of things they should be looking for. It aims to repeat its survey of schools in September. Pupils will soon find out whether the careers guidance secured by their school is able to meet their needs in providing a direction and hope for the future, or fails them altogether.