Government considers boost to National Careers Service

In its response to the education select committee report on careers guidance, the Department for Education (DfE) said it agreed that the role and remit of the service could be strengthened to improve accountability.

The DfE said that this could include increasing its role in bringing schools, businesses and colleges together to improve career guidance.

“The reprocurement of the National Careers Service from April 2014 provides government with a good opportunity to revisit this,” it added.

However the department rejected the committee’s claim that making schools responsible for careers guidance was a mistake.

“We are disappointed that the committee describes our decision to transfer responsibility for careers to schools as regrettable,” said the government in its response.

“At the time of the inquiry the duty had been in place for only one term so we feel strongly that greater consideration could have been given to the need to allow the new arrangements time to bed in and evolve before drawing such firm conclusions.”

The government also rejected the committee’s call for schools to be required to publish annual careers plans.

“The government has radically cut back bureaucracy for schools,” said the government in its response.

“A mandatory careers plan would re-introduce bureaucracy of the kind we have tried so hard to remove, and it is not clear that the document would improve the quality of careers programmes.

“We are confident in head teachers’ ability to plan their provision in a way that works best for them.

“On this basis, we do not plan to adopt this recommendation.”

Joy Mercer, director of education policy at the Association of Colleges, said it was “disappointing” that the government had not embraced the idea of making schools publish annual careers plans.

“We await the Ofsted thematic review, but do hope that inspection will place a much bigger focus on careers advice when they inspect schools,” she said.

“The UK has a major youth unemployment problem and our concern is that government is not acknowledging that careers advice is unsatisfactory and isn’t recognising the mismatch in what parents and school teachers believe employers want from young recruits.”