Advice to aspire
Charlotte Goddard
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Twelve months after schools took responsibility from local authorities for securing careers guidance for young people, Charlotte Goddard investigates the availability and quality of provision that is out there.
The first year in which schools have taken responsibility for providing young people with careers advice has, to put it mildly, been a challenge.
Frustrated at the apparent mismatch between young people's skills and the realities of the workplace, John Cridland, director general of the CBI, warned head teachers in June that "careers advice is on life support in many areas".
He added: "It's right that schools should have the freedom to run their own affairs - but the government may have adopted too laissez faire an approach with serious consequences for our young people."
In August, a Barnardo's report declared that young people were being failed by a "ghost" careers guidance service. Over the summer holidays, nearly every day saw another business, education or third sector leader step forward to bemoan the state of careers advice and guidance in England, and the way we prepare our young people for the workplace.
Then last week, Ofsted entered the fray, publishing findings of a "thematic review" of the careers education, advice and guidance provided by 60 schools. The report does not paint a pretty picture. Three out of four schools are not implementing their duty to provide impartial careers advice. Vocational training and apprenticeships are rarely promoted, particularly in schools with sixth forms where A-levels remain the "gold standard".
The Ofsted report found those giving careers advice - often teachers - did not have comprehensive expertise and few had bought in adequate services. About half the schools used their own staff to inform students about careers, but these staff often had insufficient training and did not provide students with up-to-date information. Engagement between employers and schools is lacking, with too little work experience being offered to young people.
Confronted with the barrage of criticism, the government responded by immediately publishing a Careers Guidance Action Plan in response to Ofsted's report (see box). It includes a promise to issue more explicit guidance on what schools should be doing to provide impartial careers advice.
Ofsted's findings are echoed by others. Unison has been working with the University of Derby to survey local authority and school provision of careers support. Initial findings suggest that schools are not providing the same level of service that local authorities had been providing previously. Services for vulnerable young people, for which local authorities have retained responsibility, have also been hit. The survey found a 77 per cent reduction in funding for targeted services for vulnerable young people aged 13 to 19 and up to 24 who are not in education, employment or training, or are in danger of disengaging.
On the other hand, the Ofsted report also found that in many cases schools themselves were concentrating on vulnerable young people to the exclusion of offering a more universal service: only one in five schools were effective in ensuring that all its students in Years 9, 10 and 11 were receiving the level of information, advice and guidance they needed to support decision making. The highest priority was given to providing careers guidance to Year 11 students and to focusing support for vulnerable students.
Denise Bertuchi, assistant national officer at Unison, says: "Across the country, there is a hotchpotch of different methods of monitoring who is getting targeted support and who is not. In some areas, it is a wasteland in terms of careers advice for young people." She says a lack of direction from the government on the transfer of responsibility and funding has not helped: "Guidance was issued in April last year, and schools make plans in January, so schools were not well prepared."
Carolyn Taylor, careers advice manager at Adviza, formerly Connexions Thames Valley, confirms that some schools were not well prepared. "In some cases, we seem to have been the first person to break the news to schools."
Cheap, basic provision
Before schools assumed responsibility last September, there were a number of concerns, including the fact that they were expected to fund provision out of their existing budget. The last year has done nothing to assuage these concerns, says Ray Auvray, executive chairman of the Prospects Group: "The lesson of last year is that expecting schools to have the expertise to bring in a provider of careers guidance has not worked, and has been made worse by the fact there is no ringfenced funding. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a dive for the bottom where schools are looking for very basic provision and trying to get it reasonably cheaply."
Schools themselves agree. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, says: "The current problems with careers advice in England stem from the fact that there is no funding for it. Schools have been given an additional duty to provide impartial careers guidance with no additional money to do so. On top of this, in most areas of the country, the support once provided through Connexions and local authorities has disappeared, so schools are making up the difference themselves." But Lightman insists that extra funding, if there were any, should not be ringfenced because "schools are best placed to decide how their budgets should be spent".
Amid the general unease at the transfer of responsibilities, some schools have welcomed the new duty as a chance to embed careers advice into the curriculum in a way they could not when it was just a service they received. "They quite like it," says Adviza's Taylor. "They feel they have more control now and can choose what they want."
Rearranging PSHE programme
Paul Dick, headmaster at Kennet Academy in Berkshire, last year appointed a "head of careers and aspiration" in response to the changes. Dick, whose school works with Adviza, says: "We have rearranged our whole PSHE programme, looking more carefully at what children are going to be given on the careers side, and planning so there is coherence from Years 7 to 13." The academy targets provision depending on the needs of the pupil. He explains: "A high proportion of less able children will come from the pupil premium cohort, so we have run business-style activities for pupil premium pupils, to try to bring them back into the fold in Year 9."
Ofsted's report says too few schools use partnerships with local employers to ensure that the career guidance pupils receive chimes with the broad range of career pathways available. Dick has been trying to build links with local businesses, but is finding this difficult. "It is very hard to get people to give up a day or half a day's work," he says.
Ofsted has sought to address concerns that schools will not make careers provision a priority while they have so many other issues to keep at the front of mind, not least academic results. The inspectorate wrote to schools earlier this year to inform them that there will now be a stronger emphasis on careers guidance in its inspections, which may go some way to holding weaker schools to account. Its recent report also recommends that its own inspectors take greater account of careers guidance and students' destinations when conducting future school inspections.
The select committee's recommendation to expand the statutory duty to cover 12- to 13-year-olds in Year 8 and sixth-formers in Years 12 and 13 was adopted by the government and came into force this month. The committee also wanted schools to guarantee pupils at least one face-to-face interview with an independent adviser and called for the imposition of quality standards on schools.
Schools are not obliged to commission qualified careers professionals. "Schools are driving the market down," says Auvray. "They want to pay a careers adviser, with the same levels of qualifications as a teacher, a lot less."
Careers advice and guidance is a complex role and advisers have to stay in touch with an ever-changing labour market, qualifications requirements and further education options. The Careers Development Institute, created through the merger of four organisations, launched this year and is the guardian of a register of careers professionals to help professionalise the sector. "The Careers Development Institute is starting to find its feet," says Steve Stewart, chair of Careers England. "But it is hard to get people enthusiastic about upskilling at a time when the number of careers advisers is going down."
Effective marketing needed
Ofsted's latest report found the National Careers Service and its website was not being adequately promoted in schools. Many young people had never heard of it, while those who had said they could get much the same service from other websites or organisations. Ofsted is calling for the service to market itself more effectively to 13- to 18-year-olds, and to do more to disseminate information on national skills shortages so that young people gain a greater understanding of where there are likely to be greater employment opportunities.
The service, which went live last year, was intended to be retendered earlier this year, but has been delayed until October. Some professionals believe this is an indication that the government intends to expand the body's work for young people. "All the indications are that the government knows it has to do something," says Stewart. "I suspect it will be along the lines of giving the National Careers Service an additional role in helping schools to put together what they need to do."
It is a little ironic that adults appear to be getting a better service than ever, at a time when careers services for young people are widely seen as on their last legs. "We supported around 400,000 adults last year through our National Careers Service contracts," says Auvray. "It is a pity the experience that adults are benefiting from isn't available to the young people in our schools and colleges in the same way."
Lightman cautions: "A national telephone helpline and a website are useful for information, but they are no substitute for a conversation with a qualified, knowledgeable careers professional who can help young people make informed choices."
Careers education and advice consultant David Andrews published a paper in March, The Future of Careers Work in Schools in England, which considered various models of national and local careers provision. He says that those who have responded to the paper have indicated a preference either for a genuinely all-age external careers guidance service, providing face-to-face guidance to young people in schools, or for a school-based model where schools employ a careers development adviser.
"No one has said that we should continue with the current commissioning model," he says.
The government's rationale for dismantling the Connexions service and the introduction of school-based information, advice and guidance was that careers advice was too inconsistent across the country. But 12 months since the change, provision remains as patchy as ever.
CAREERS GUIDANCE ACTION PLAN
The government this month issued an "action plan" in response to recommendations from the Ofsted review and the National Careers Council report. It has pledged to:
- Revise statutory guidance for schools on their duty to secure independent and impartial careers guidance. This will highlight the need to build strong connections with employers, supplemented by purposeful work experience and taster courses; make clearer what schools should do to ensure students have information about all types of education and training; make clear that signposting students to a careers website is not sufficient to meet the careers duty and that face-to-face support has a part to play.
- Strengthen Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 destination measures to show impact of schools and colleges in supporting students into further education, training or work.
- Give careers guidance a higher priority in school inspections with immediate effect.
- "Reshape and reprioritise" what is available for young people, schools and employers through the National Careers Service, which will be recontracted to boost its role in facilitating links between schools and employers, and the quality of information provided by local education partnerships on the service's website.
- Increase the service's use of social media including Twitter and Facebook to reach young people, and boost content of the mobile website.
- Consider how the National Careers Service can work more effectively with charities that support young people.
- Explore how "character" and "resilience" can be promoted as part of the learning experience, identifying and sharing good practice among schools and colleges.
SCHOOL RESPONSIBILITY: THE STORY SO FAR
November 2011: Education Act 2011 is passed, transferring provision of careers advice and guidance from local authorities to schools, which must fund provision from existing budgets. Local authorities retain a duty to provide careers guidance to the most vulnerable young people. Schools are expected to provide impartial advice, but do not have to guarantee a face-to-face interview with a careers adviser and do not have to use qualified advisers.
April 2012: National Careers Service launches. It targets mainly adults, but has an all-age website.
September 2012: Schools take on the responsibility for commissioning and paying for careers advice and guidance for Year 9 to 11.
November 2012: Careers England publishes the findings of a survey of careers providers' experiences of working with schools and local authorities. It finds only 16.5 per cent of surveyed schools last academic year retained the level of careers education, information, advice and guidance they provided in 2011/12.
January 2013: Education select committee publishes report calling for the National Careers Service to work more closely with schools; for schools to offer a minimum of one face-to-face interview with an independent adviser; and the introduction of quality standards for careers guidance in schools.
April 2013: Career Development Institute opens its doors, aiming to provide a single voice for the sector. It operates a UK-wide register of careers development professionals.
May 2013: Labour Party policy review's skills taskforce publishes interim report criticising the decision to transfer careers advice to schools and making a case for sub-regional independent careers guidance services with strong links to employers.
June 2013: National Careers Council publishes An Aspirational Nation, calling for an urgent culture change to address the mismatch between high unemployment and employers who are struggling to recruit. The director-general of the CBI tells grammar school heads that careers advice is on "life support" in many areas.
August 2013: Barnardo's publishes report, Helping the Inbetweeners, which finds careers services are not reaching enough vulnerable young people. Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw writes to head teachers to inform them that careers guidance will now form part of inspections: inspectors will look at "how well leaders and managers ensure that the curriculum provides timely independent information, advice and guidance to assist pupils on their next steps in training, education or employment".
September 2013: The statutory duty on schools and colleges is extended to cover Year 8 to Year 13. Ofsted publishes the results of its investigation into the provision of careers advice and guidance in schools. The government publishes Careers Guidance Action Plan as a response to the Ofsted and National Careers Council reports (see "Careers Guidance Action Plan", above).
COMMISSIONING CASE STUDY: THE BLACKBURN COLLECTIVE
On the surface, little has changed in the careers advice offered to teenagers in Blackburn with Darwen. Whether they attend an academy, special school or maintained secondary school, all young people in the area still receive careers advice from what was the local Connexions service, now known as the Via Partnership.
The service is commissioned by the Blackburn with Darwen education improvement partnership, which was set up in 2011. All schools pay in to a central fund and head teachers act as directors. Commissioning as a collective, the partnership is able to negotiate cost reductions. "It is more cost effective for Via not to have to negotiate individually with each school," says Sharon Roscoe, the partnership's chief executive. Each school has, however, negotiated its own service-level agreement with the careers advice and guidance provider.
"The Via Partnership was already commissioned by the local authority to provide the targeted careers service, so it made sense to use them for the universal service as well," explains Roscoe. "From a young person's perspective, they wouldn't have different providers working in school and outside. And quality-wise, Via has a good reputation in the area."
Via's Careers Inspired Learning programme includes careers education, information, advice and guidance, work-related learning, work tasters and workforce development for teachers engaged in careers provision. Schools are able to choose customised packages from a menu of provision.
The professionals delivering the service are all appropriately qualified to QCF Level 6, although this is not a government requirement.
Roscoe says the schools are "happy with the service they receive", although the process of commissioning rather than receiving services paid for by the government has been a "learning journey". The education improvement partnership has just signed up Via Partnership for another year and is currently looking at widening the information, advice and guidance service to younger pupils.
UK CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARDS
Launched by the Career Development Institute (CDI) this summer, the awards are open to all CDI members and cover four best practice and two individual awards for Careers Educator of the Year and Careers Adviser/Coach of the Year. The closing date for entries is Monday 30 September. The Awards will be presented at the CDI's first annual conference at a dinner event on Thursday, 7 November. For more information, visit www.thecdi.net/UK-Career-Development-Awards.