Fourth Report - Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance

The system of careers education, information, advice and guidance has undergone many changes over the past decade. It appears that the right framework is broadly in place, but there is a lack of a clear overarching strategy and stated outcomes. Progress towards meeting the Gatsby benchmarks has been slow, with schools and colleges only meeting just over half of them on average. Furthermore, the system of self-reporting means that we do not have a full picture of how many are being achieved.

The Department should publish an updated Careers Strategy, developed in consultation with other Departments and relevant stakeholders, by the end of 2024. This should include clear, measurable outcomes and dates by which these should be achieved, including targets for increasing the number of schools achieving the Gatsby benchmarks in full.

High-quality CEIAG provision is an essential part of pupils’ personal development and should be a core part of the Ofsted framework. The Department must ensure that Ofsted is upholding a strong focus on CEIAG provision when inspecting schools, in particular looking at schools’ achievement of the Gatsby benchmarks.

The Department should update its statutory guidance to make reporting through the Compass tool compulsory for all secondary schools and colleges, and work with the Careers and Enterprise Company to ensure that they are providing the support and resources needed to do this. (Paragraph 17) The organisations delivering CEIAG

The Careers and Enterprise Company appears to have made improvements over the past few years and is achieving positive results, particularly through the expansion of Careers Hubs. 90% of schools and colleges are now part of a Careers Hub: we would like to see this expanded to all schools and colleges as soon as possible to ensure consistency of provision across the country.

Careers Leaders are much needed in schools and colleges, but many are struggling to fulfil their responsibilities effectively due to lack of time amid competing pressures, and almost half have less than a day per week allocated to their role. This is a crucial role that must be given the appropriate time and resource.

The Department should set an objective for the Careers and Enterprise Company to ensure that 100% of schools and colleges are part of Careers Hubs by the end of 2024, and must provide the CEC with the appropriate resources and funding to achieve this.

The Department should update its statutory guidance to suggest an appropriate proportion of time that Careers Leaders should be given to fulfil their role and should require schools and colleges to publish information on the time they have allocated to the role on their website. It should ensure that the Careers and Enterprise Company Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance 49 is collecting and publishing data from schools and colleges on the proportion of time that Careers Leaders have to fulfil their role and whether Careers Leaders feel this is sufficient.

The National Careers Service website is theoretically available to young people from the age of 13, but in practice is not targeted at or being used by them. Fewer than 10% of 18–19-year-olds had used it in 2018 and none of the young people we spoke to had heard of it. While we accept that schools and colleges have the main responsibility for CEIAG provision a high-quality, accessible website offering information and guidance is essential to complement their work and offer an alternative to young people outside of school or college.

The Department should either work with DWP to ensure that the National Careers Service website has content appropriate and accessible to young people under 18 or create an alternative to the National Careers Service website which is accessible to and useful to young people. In the meantime, it should update the National Careers Service website to provide links to suggested websites which are more appropriate for those aged under 18.

There is a broad consensus that the current structure of CEIAG provision is fragmented, causes confusion, and creates gaps and overlaps. We do not believe that creating a single, all-age body is necessary at this stage, but agree with Professor Sir John Holman and others that there needs to be more alignment between the existing organisations and that areas of overlap should be removed.

The Department should follow the recommendation set by Professor Sir John Holman to bring the existing delivery bodies under a single strategic umbrella function, sharing a common strategic framework and coordinating local services. We ask the Minister to update us on his planned reforms in this area and provide us with a timeline for implementing them. We recommend that these should go further than simply bringing together websites: the Department should take an in-depth look at the governance and functions of the different bodies to ensure that their work is fully aligned and that any areas of overlap are addressed, coordinating with other Government Departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Department’s expenditure on CEIAG provision is around £5,000 per school— falling far short of the estimated £38,000 to £76,000 needed to achieve the Gatsby benchmarks. The expectation on schools and colleges to pay for CEIAG out of their already stretched budgets is causing significant disparities in provision, and we have heard that schools are only spending £2 per pupil on careers. This has led to gaps in support for certain activities, in particular access to independent careers advisers and for schools to achieve the Quality in Careers Standard.

The Department should pilot a programme of funding careers advisers directly through the CEC, rather than requiring schools and colleges to buy in this support from their existing budgets.

To target those most in need of improvement, we recommend that the Department should make one-off developmental funding available to schools and colleges who 50 Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance have the lowest record of achieving the Gatsby benchmarks to support them to improve their CEIAG provision, setting out clear objectives and conditions of receiving this funding.

The Department should include support for CEIAG provision in the package available to education investment areas and priority education investment areas and use this to develop pilots in these areas to explore what works best. (Paragraph 56) CEIAG in primary schools

Starting careers education early is essential to broadening children’s horizons and showing them the full range of opportunities in the world of work. The Department has so far been taking an approach of relatively small-scale pilot programmes to test approaches, which appear to have been making a positive start, but support should be scaled up as soon as possible to ensure that the whole country can benefit.

The Department should evaluate the success of its careers programme for primary schools after its first year, and if it has been shown to have a positive impact, scale it up to cover all areas of England. In doing so the Department should consider working with the full range of providers who have demonstrated their ability to provide effective programmes in this space.

Additionally, the Department should work with the Gatsby Foundation to develop a tailored set of benchmarks for careers education in primary schools and provide guidance and resources through the Careers and Enterprise Company to support schools to meet them. (Paragraph 67) Embedding careers into the curriculum

We have heard some strong examples of careers being successfully embedded into the curriculum and the situation is improving, with 70% of schools and colleges fully achieving the relevant Gatsby benchmark, up from 38% in 2018. However, more support and guidance must be put in place to enable this: currently, teachers lack the training and support they need to be able to do this effectively, and the curriculum itself does not provide explicit links to relevant careers.

The Department should launch a consultation on how best to incorporate careers education into different levels of teacher training, including for primary school teachers, looking at every level including initial teacher training and Early Career Frameworks, National Professional Qualifications and CPD.

There is a clear need to explore ways in which teachers can gain familiarity with the world of work in sectors relevant to the subjects they teach, in order to be able to pass this knowledge on to their pupils. We look forward to hearing more details of the Department’s upcoming pilot to connect teachers with businesses: the Department should use this opportunity to provide more teachers with experience of modern workplaces across a range of sectors. (Paragraph 81) Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance 51

In the Department’s work to develop model curricula, it must engage with CEIAG professionals and employer representatives to ensure that links to relevant career paths and examples from the world of work are incorporated. (Paragraph 82) Connecting employers with schools

Too many young people are missing out on high-quality work experience placements, particularly the most disadvantaged and those living outside large cities. Increasing access is crucial to opening up opportunities for young people across the country: virtual and hybrid placements can play a key role here, but should not be prioritised at the expense of in-person experiences.

We have heard that administrative requirements, particularly concerns around safeguarding, may form a barrier to schools being able to arrange work experience placements. Safeguarding is an essential aspect of every school and college’s work. The opportunity for young people to experience the workplace and access the benefits that such placements offer is also crucial. We welcome the Minister’s agreement that access should be as easy as possible and his commitment to help schools overcome any barriers.

The Department should consult on the administrative requirements for schools and employers to provide work experience and consider whether any requirements can be removed or lightened without compromising the safety and wellbeing of pupils. It must work with the Careers and Enterprise Company to ensure that these requirements are communicated clearly to schools and employers, along with clarity on what is not required.

The goals set out in the Gatsby benchmark of experiences of the workplace provide a useful framework for schools to follow, but schools must ensure that opportunities are of high quality and tailored to pupils’ individual needs and aspirations rather than following a ‘tick-box’ approach to organising placements. The Department should work with the Careers and Enterprise Company to develop a toolkit setting out what constitutes meaningful work experience to count towards the Gatsby benchmark objectives and ensure that this is shared with Careers Leaders in schools and colleges.

The Department should develop a national platform for work experience placements, which includes virtual opportunities, allowing schools and employers to collaborate over finding and organising placements. It should work with the Careers and Enterprise Company to ensure that Careers Hubs are promoting work experience opportunities and offering the right support to schools.

The new provider access legislation is an important step in the right direction to ensure that pupils are hearing about the full range of post-16 options available. We look forward to seeing the impact of these reforms, but we are concerned that there currently does not seem to be a robust system of monitoring compliance.

Simply informing pupils of the options available is not enough to tackle the fundamental bias towards academic routes still seen in many schools. As long as 52 Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance schools are incentivised to steer pupils towards academic paths and to celebrate university admissions over apprenticeship or work outcomes, this problem is likely to remain.

The Department should directly track compliance with the new provider access legislation and ensure that the appropriate action, as set out in the statutory guidance, is taken when schools are failing to comply. We recognise that Ofsted is not awarding “outstanding” grades to schools not complying with the Baker Clause—it must now ensure that this is being applied consistently across all schools to the new provider access legislation.

The Department should develop potential solutions to the problem of schools being incentivised to encourage pupils to follow academic routes. As a first step, it must ensure that Ofsted are giving appropriate weight to employment and vocational routes when looking at destinations data and pupils’ preparedness for their next steps, and that schools are actively promoting apprenticeships as a positive destination alongside universities. (Paragraph 115) “Cultivating optimism and hope”: Improving CEIAG provision for specific groups of pupils

It is essential that disadvantaged pupils and those from minority ethnic backgrounds receive high-quality CEIAG provision and have access to the full range of opportunities available to their peers. While the Department and the CEC’s approach of trialling programmes in local areas is a sensible way of testing policy proposals and prioritising disadvantage, this risks creating a postcode lottery of support and is not a long-term solution to reducing the disadvantage gap in CEIAG provision.

The Department must evaluate the impact of its pilot programmes targeting disadvantaged pupils and those from minority ethnic groups and set out a timeline for when it expects the programmes to be rolled out nationally, where they are proven to be effective.

It is clear that pupils with SEND have particular need of high-quality, tailored CEIAG provision, and worrying that these young people are more than twice as likely as their peers to have received no careers guidance at all. It is positive that the Department is piloting extending Supported Internships to pupils without an EHCP, but the SEND Improvement Plan was a missed opportunity to further improve CEIAG provision for this group.

The Department should work with the CEC to collect and publish data on the proportion of SENCOs who have undertaken careers training, and set out the steps it intends to take to ensure that all SENCOs are fully trained and working with Careers Leaders with a school or college.

Four years ago, our predecessor Committee highlighted the gaps in access to Supported Internships for pupils with SEND without an EHCP. We welcome the Department’s Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance 53 pilot to extend the programme as announced in the Spring Budget and recommend that this should be rolled out to cover all areas of the country if the pilot is proved to be successful.

Pupils in care and young carers are likely to face additional barriers to accessing CEIAG and moving into employment, but there appears to be limited understanding of how these groups access and navigate the CEIAG system, and little targeted support in place for this group. It is positive that the Department has expanded its pilot of extending Pupil Premium Plus funding to young people in further education, but we would like to see more of an explicit focus on careers advice and guidance in the funding criteria.

The Department must scale up its programme of expanded Pupil Premium Plus funding to cover all areas of the country and ensure that, as a condition of receiving the funding, local authorities are providing young people with access to careers advice.

The Department should conduct research into the experience of CEIAG among young carers and the barriers they face. Following this, it should use its learning from its existing pilot programmes for disadvantaged groups to put in place targeted support for this group.

There is a clear need for support enabling pupils outside mainstream education to access careers advice and guidance. The rising number of pupils being educated at home risks more and more young people being locked out of access to CEIAG provision, and the much-awaited register of pupils not in school is still lacking, with no clear timeframe for this to be delivered.

The Department must develop a system of support for young people outside of mainstream education to access CEIAG, either through improvements to the National Careers Service or through the Careers and Enterprise Company. This should be clearly advertised and proactively targeted to ensure that young people and their families are aware of and able to access the support.

The Department must deliver on its commitment to introduce a register of pupils not in school by the end of the year, and should use this to gather more data on the characteristics of these pupils and how best to target support. The proposed duty on local authorities to provide support to home educating families, as set out in the draft Schools Bill, should be implemented alongside this and used to ensure that local authorities and/or Local Enterprise Partnerships can support CEIAG provision for home educated pupils. (Paragraph 150) 54 Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance