Examination of Witnesses (Questions 466
- 479)
MONDAY 15 MARCH 2004
MS DEIRDRE
HUGHES AND
MS CATHY
BEREZNICKI
Q466 Chairman: May I welcome Cathy
Bereznicki and Deirdre Hughes to our deliberations. May I say
that although both of them are personally known to me; indeed
I was at a very pleasant reception with the Guidance Council last
week, where I warned them that any thought that that might soften
me up for this afternoon's session was of no avail. It is very
good to have you here, and can we get into this session proper.
We are conducting a full inquiry into the whole skills area, and
of course careers, Connexions and the whole area is very important
to the sector. We are really now trying to find out a little more
about the fit between what happens to people post-school from
14-19, how 14-19 fits in with the Skills White Paper. Some government
documents talk about 14-16, others talk about 14-19, and so on,
and in between Connexions, careers, there seems to be a lack of
focus, certainly in terms of the reading that I have done. So
tell us firstly a bit about your organisation, where it comes
from, what it intends to do, what its mission is. Who would like
to start?
Ms Bereznicki: I am from the Guidance
Council, I am chief executive of the Guidance Council. We were
set up 10 years ago—in fact it is probably 11 now,—to
represent the interests of the client, so working from the perspective
of the individual rather than from the perspective of either a
policy maker or a provider of guidance. So those are our origins.
We have about 80 members. We are UK-wide, so England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland, and we have quite a substantial new
international experience as well and a good reputation internationally.
We are quite well spread over—we are a very small organisation,
with a very long order book of expectations on us. What we have
done over the last 10 years has included market research to talking
to people about what they want from guidance, and trying to get
a feel of what it is that the public feel is important to them,
and what it is that they think guidance is, and whether they are
disappointed with certain aspects of the sector; so we have done
a lot of that. Also we have developed a quality standard for organisations
that deliver guidance, and in fact we have developed two quality
standards altogether. The second one is the one which is mentioned
in the Skills Strategy; it is a matrix quality standard for organisations
delivering information, advice and guidance to adults. It is a
great delight to come to the Committee, moderately nerve-racking
of course, but by the same token this is a great opportunity to
give you some material which we hope you will be able to use in
making recommendations coming out of your review. Am I able to
make a couple of points that I want to?
Q467 Chairman: Yes, indeed. Carry
on.
Ms Bereznicki: In particular what
I would like us to say to you is we are concerned that 14-19 is
not just a phase of its own which is separate from the rest of
the young person's life, and it is quite important that we therefore
look at the 14-19 reform and processes that are in place there
as part of life-long learning and as part of life-long career
development. I might use the words "career guidance"
but career development is what people in employment seem to call
it; but essentially we are talking of the same kinds of processes.
In our evidence that we submitted to you I gave you a definition
of career guidance which came from the OECD report, and also looked
a little bit at what impartiality meant. I can certainly tell
you a bit more about that requirement if you cannot find it in
your publications. I think that is probably what I would like
to say, and I will hand over to Deirdre.
Q468 Chairman: Who set you up?
Ms Bereznicki: Sorry?
Q469 Chairman: Who set you up?
Ms Bereznicki: To do what?
Q470 Chairman: Who established you
as an organisation.
Ms Bereznicki: Right, I see.
Q471 Chairman: Where do you get your
funding from?
Ms Bereznicki: We are an independent
organisation, we have members, and we survive by getting grants
and contracts for different pieces of work. So there are all sorts
of people who fund the Guidance Council. The Department has funded
us to do some work for them. The matrix standard, for example,
was funded by the Department for Education and Skills. Then other
people might include the Lifelong Learning Foundation and other
people like that, and sometimes there are private companies who
get involved as well.
Q472 Chairman: Are you a charity,
or a not-for-profit organisation?
Ms Bereznicki: We are a charity.
Q473 Chairman: You are a charity?
Deirdre, is there anything you would like to say to start us off?
Ms Hughes: Yes, thank you. First
of all I would like to say how delighted I am to be here. It is
my first appearance in front of the Committee and I shall do my
best to address the issues that you raise in our discussion. I
am director of a research and development unit based at the University
of Derby. We have been in existence for almost six years. It is
quite a unique research and development centre within a university
context, in that we were actually set up by a consortium of five
careers service companies, along with the University of Derby,
each recognised that there was a major gap between the academic
research in the field of careers and the wider practitioner agenda.
So the raison d'être of the centre is very much about
finding innovative ways to connect academics to what is actually
happening on the chalk face of service delivery, and to inspire
and motivate practitioners to be able to draw on some of the academic
thinking and research that can further support their work.
Q474 Chairman: Let us get down to
brass tacks. How good is careers guidance and advice in this country?
How do we rate? Is it right, as certain observers have said, that
it is patchy, there is not a national service, it depends what
part of the country you are in, too much focus on one client group?
How good is it? How does it need to be changed, or does it not
need to be changed?
Ms Bereznicki: Are we talking
here about 14-19, or longer than that?
Q475 Chairman: Longer than that.
Ms Bereznicki: Perhaps it is helpful
to put it in a life-long context. I have been in careers guidance
since 1978. I have seen many changes over those years, and some
of the changes have been really very positive. I think it is far
more professional now than it was when I started in it, although
the academic rigour that was present when I started in 1978 was,
in my view, a lot more robust, and I do not know whether Deirdre
might want to comment on that, being more directly associated
with the academic side. Of course things have changed enormously.
We started in 1993 with the tendering out of careers services
from local authorities into what became—a lot of them were
private companies, and some of them were real private companies
with shares and stock-holders, and others were companies limited
by guarantee, with significant input from the local education
authority. So that changed the nature of the delivery that was
made available; things became much more target driven. There is
nothing wrong with targets; there is nothing wrong with being
focused and businesslike and efficient; but what can happen with
targets, as we have perhaps seen in other areas of education,
is that they become an end in themselves, and the process is perhaps
not sufficiently robust underneath that. Do you want me to say
something about Connexions? Would that be helpful?
Q476 Chairman: Yes.
Ms Bereznicki: I think when I
look at Connexions and when I compare it with the adult guidance
services that are being made available, or more particularly information
and advice services that are being made available, under the Skills
Strategy, I can see that there is a clash of policy objectives
there in that Connexions has been built up from a social inclusion
agenda, and the Skills Strategy has been put in place for adult
guidance, and arrangements have been put in place because of skills
shortages; so it is very close to the labour force, close to the
market in that way. So there is a tension between those two different
policies, and I think while most of us—certainly I feel
like this—think that the Connexions service in terms of
having a holistic approach to young people, providing services
which are going to be more joined up, is essential—and I
would not disagree with it—what I am concerned about is
the robust careers education delivery, careers education and guidance
delivery, within Connexions, and whether that is actually delivering
the sort of services that people want, to help young people to
make the kinds of decisions they are making.
Q477 Chairman: So Connexions has
only got the resource or the focus to concentrate on NEET clients,
rather than the broader education advice? Many of us remember
one of our expert advisors saying that every child in school would
be given a careers advice session. Is that not happening any longer?
Ms Bereznicki: It used to be quite
dispiriting to start and go through to sometimes in a school,
or in one school that I worked in I remember they said "No,
you can't see anybody until we decide who is failing their mocks,
and then you can see those who want to leave". So practice
has moved on a bit since then; but there is a concern that an
over-emphasis on what we call the NEET group—I think the
Committee probably knows what I mean by that, do they not?
Q478 Chairman: Not in school—?
Ms Bereznicki: Not in education,
employment or training—which are assumed to be about 10%
of the cohort. An over-emphasis on them has meant that services
for other people have not been available to the same extent. Of
course careers is very different now, the whole profession is
quite different now, and the way that careers information is available
is very different now. There is a lot of internet delivery of
information. Labour market information is woeful, and I do not
think that many people would disagree with me on that. I think
there are lots of reasons behind that. There is a lot more information
around the place, and of course with the 14-19-year-olds the diploma
structure and the choices that have to be made there, that makes
that fairly complex; so if anything, we need to enhance delivery
of careers education and guidance to this group rather than reducing
it or focusing it in a different area. I notice too—and
we do not know enough about this, but I see anecdotal evidence—that
some people feel that Connexions is for people having problems
rather than for all young people.
Q479 Chairman: It is for?
Ms Bereznicki: For people who
are having difficulty, rather than for all young people.
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