2Quality of careers advice in schools
9.The previous Education Committee’s 2013 Report, Careers guidance for young people: The impact of the new duty on schools, described the Government’s decision to transfer responsibility for careers information, advice and guidance to schools as “regrettable”, stating that:
The weaknesses of the school-based model have been compounded by the failure to transfer to schools any budget with which to provide the service. This has led, predictably, to a drop in the overall level of provision.15
The Report added that “urgent steps must be taken by the Government to ensure that the current settlement meets the needs of young people”.16
10.We heard that, in spite of the Education Committee’s call for action, many schools were still not providing their students with good quality careers information, advice and guidance. We were told time and again that the quality of careers provision in English schools was “patchy” and that while there were some excellent examples—one of which, St Marylebone School, we visited—in too many cases careers information, advice and guidance was not good enough.17 Ofsted, the body responsible for inspecting schools, has been particularly critical of schools’ provision of careers guidance. It stated that its inspectors were “finding that young people are still not receiving sufficient information on the full range of career options available to them to ensure that they are making informed choices about their next steps at the age of 16”.18 Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, told the Education Committee in September 2015 that careers guidance was “a disaster area in schools”.19
11.We also heard that some groups were more likely to access careers provision than others: Professor Louise Archer and Dr Julie Moote, from the ASPIRES 2 longitudinal research project at King’s College, London,20 said that their analyses had suggested that “careers provision is not just patchy but is patterned—particularly in terms of social mobility”. They found that “girls, minority ethnic, working-class, lower-attaining and students who are unsure of their aspirations or who plan to leave education post-16 are all significantly less likely to report receiving careers education”.21
12.The concerns about the quality of careers information, advice and guidance in schools were brought home to us at the informal event we held with young people. Many of those attending told us that they had not received good quality careers advice whilst at school. We heard a number of recurring concerns, including that:
- Careers advice was not sufficiently tailored towards the needs of individual students, with young people being ‘pigeonholed’ for particular careers or receiving advice that was too generic to be useful;
- Advice was provided by non-specialist staff who lacked awareness of the modern jobs market and knowledge of non-university paths;
- Some schools, particularly those with sixth forms, pushed students towards academic routes and did not inform them of other routes such as apprenticeships;
- There was a lack of support and encouragement for students with special educational needs.
13.We heard mixed views as to whether careers information, advice and guidance in schools was beginning to improve. Professor Sir John Holman, who had produced a report on careers guidance on behalf of the Gatsby Foundation, stated the provision of careers advice was “getting better, just, with the potential to get a lot better”.22 Other experts were more pessimistic. Dr Deirdre Hughes, Principal Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, pointed to evidence that “England was beginning to slip behind other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Japan, Switzerland and many others”.23 Professor Ann Hodgson, Co-Director of the Centre for Post-14 Education and Work at University College, London, said that since the 1980s:
we seem to have gone round and round in circles and very much come back to the same point. It is constantly recycling and I am afraid not necessarily improving, in my view.24
14.The Minister responsible for careers guidance in schools, Sam Gyimah, told us that the quality was “improving mainly in terms of school leaders taking more of an active interest, but also the revised statutory guidance that the Department published and the work that the Department is doing is beginning to bear some fruit”.25
15.It is three years since the Education Committee produced a Report raising serious concerns about the quality of careers information, advice and guidance in schools and yet provision remains patchy across England. We are very disappointed that careers advice and guidance is still poor in so many schools: the system has failed too many young people for far too long. The Government’s careers strategy is urgently needed and must include immediate steps to ensure all young people have access to high quality information, advice and guidance. In this Report we will set out what the key steps should be.
What should schools be doing?
16.While the quality of careers information, advice and guidance in English schools is undoubtedly patchy, there appears to be no shortage of reports setting out how it could be improved. Our evidence pointed in particular to recent research conducted by Professor Sir John Holman for the Gatsby Foundation, which drew on visits to English schools and six countries where careers guidance was considered to be good.26 Using this research, the Gatsby Foundation’s report set out what it considered to be the eight key benchmarks of good careers guidance in schools (see box below).27 The Gatsby Foundation’s project team surveyed a 10% sample of English secondary schools in 2013 and found that no school fulfilled five of the eight benchmarks and most fulfilled only one. The Foundation is now funding a pilot in the North East of England, in part “to find out which benchmarks are easiest to reach, and which are the hardest, and how to overcome the challenges”.28 In addition, the Careers & Enterprise Company has developed a tool to enable schools to benchmark their activities against the Gatsby benchmarks.29
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The Gatsby Foundation’s eight benchmarks of good careers guidance (1) A stable careers programme (2) Learning from career and labour market information (3) Addressing the needs of each pupil (4) Linking curriculum learning to careers (5) Encounters with employers and employees (6) Experiences of workplaces (7) Encounters with further and higher education (8) Personal guidance (9) |
17.A key message from the Gatsby Foundation’s research appears to be that effective careers provision has to include a range of different interventions by schools. This point was also reflected in our written evidence. Our evidence focussed in particular on the need for a combination of independent and impartial advice and guidance, careers education delivered through the school curriculum, and the ability for students to meet with employers to hear about the world of work. Adviza, a careers and employability charity, stated:
We firmly believe that quality careers provision needs to consist of a robust programme of careers education [ … ] for at least years 7-13, encounters with employers and experience of the world of work along with impartial guidance to help individuals to interpret all of these inputs and make robust, well thought through decisions.30
18.During our visit to St Marylebone School, we saw how it had developed an effective careers programme including all three of these elements. The school employed two independent careers advisers, who gave students one-to-one guidance. It enriched the curriculum with careers-related content, so that students were encouraged to think throughout their schooling about the pathways available to them. It had also done a lot of work to build links with employers.31 We were told that a great deal of resource had been put into careers activity. There was clear commitment to careers provision from the governors, senior leadership and staff, and supportive parents used social networks to broaden the opportunities provided to students. The students we met spoke very highly of the careers education and guidance they had received. The school’s work with employers had also been recognised in an Ofsted best practice publication.32
19.An effective school careers programme should include a combination of impartial and independent advice and guidance, careers education embedded in the curriculum, and opportunities for students to engage with employers. We consider the Gatsby Foundation’s eight benchmarks a useful statement of the careers provision to which all schools should be aspiring. The Government’s policy objective should be to incentivise all schools to ensure their careers provision is brought up to a good standard and to hold them to account when they fail to do so.
Incentivising schools
20.We heard that some schools might not be giving sufficient priority to careers information, advice and guidance because the accountability system was increasingly focussed on academic progress and attainment. When we visited St Marylebone School, we formed the view that the school had been able to give more priority to careers provision because its “outstanding” Ofsted judgment had released it from some of the accountability pressures other schools faced. Professor Ann Hodgson told us that the “benchmarks that they are judged against by Ofsted and in performance tables are all to do with acquiring examinations”.33 Graham Stuart MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Careers Information, Advice and Guidance, said that head teachers faced “pressure—and even lose their jobs—if their schools fail to meet performance targets on a range of issues, for example exam results and Ofsted inspections” but had “no comparable incentive to treat careers advice as a priority”.34
21.We also heard that schools with sixth forms were particularly reluctant to provide impartial advice and guidance, because there was a financial incentive for them to encourage students to stay on for A-levels. The British Chambers of Commerce told us that its members reported “a lack of willingness from some schools to signpost students to apprenticeships and other vocational pathways”, which they said was because “the per pupil school funding system favours encouraging pupils down the A-level route as it is a source of funding for the school, if it has a Sixth Form”.35 Several of the young people who attended our engagement event told us that their schools had encouraged them to stay on for the sixth form and had done little to encourage them to consider vocational qualifications. In contrast, St Marylebone School told us that one of its impartial careers advisers held one-to-one meetings with all year 11 students to discuss the different options available, including A-levels, further education and apprenticeships: a significant proportion of students subsequently chose not to stay on in the sixth form but to pursue other options at age 16. In our view, this approach is the right one; it is clear that other schools could do more to ensure their students receive similarly impartial advice, although we recognise that there are resource constraints for many schools.
22.In January 2016, the Government announced that it would be introducing new legislation, under which schools would “be required by law to collaborate with colleges, university technical colleges and other training providers to ensure that young people are aware of all the routes to higher skills and the workplace, including higher and degree apprenticeships”.36 Katharine Horler, Chair of the Board of Careers England, an organisation representing careers services providers, told us that this new law was “to be welcomed”, but questioned how it was going to be enforced, saying that it was “all very well having a law, but how are they going to know whether schools do or don’t do it?”.37 Mr Gyimah told us that “in part of the legislation, we will be making sure that we are looking at ways of enforcing it”.38
23.We welcome the Government’s intention to legislate to require schools to collaborate with training providers and look forward to seeing further details of how it will work in practice. We recommend that the Government set out robust mechanisms to ensure that the new law is well-publicised and properly enforced.
Ofsted
24.We heard that Ofsted could do more to hold schools to account for their careers provision. In 2015, Ofsted introduced its new common inspection framework for education, skills and early years, under which providers receive an overall effectiveness judgment39 and graded judgments in four areas, one of which relates to “personal development, behaviour and welfare”.40 This judgment includes a bullet point relating to the successful promotion of and support for “choices about the next stage of [students’] education, employment, self-employment or training, where relevant from impartial careers advice and guidance”.41 It was suggested that if Ofsted were to give greater attention to careers provision in its inspection judgments, schools would have more incentive to take it seriously. The Liverpool City Region Employment and Skills Board called for Ofsted “to place more attention on the quality and impartiality of careers provision within schools and colleges”, stating that “the requirement to have outstanding careers provision as a gateway to an overall judgement of outstanding would ensure that more schools took this seriously”.42 Future Academies, a multi-academy trust, said that:
Careers Advice in school is not an Ofsted judgement–therefore it doesn’t get truly measured. Something that isn’t measured doesn’t have to get done and is this the crux of the issue?43
25.Sean Harford, Ofsted’s National Director of Education, told us that Ofsted had “sharpened the focus on careers in our inspections” but added that “it would have to be quite bad and outweigh a lot of other good work for this to downgrade a school”.44 The Skills Minister, Nick Boles, suggested that this position should change, stating that:
We need to start seeing a few schools marked down in their Ofsted judgment because they have failed to provide independent advice and guidance on the full range of options; the jungle drum will work pretty quickly once that starts happening.45
26.In our view, preparing young people for the world of work and guiding them towards decisions about their future are critical to what schools, especially secondary schools, do. They should be judged on how well they fulfil these roles. We welcome the increased emphasis Ofsted has placed on careers provision but agree with the Minister for Skills that it should be downgrading schools that do not provide effective information, advice and guidance.
27.We recommend that Ofsted introduce a specific judgment on careers information, advice and guidance for secondary schools, and set clear criteria for making these judgments. The Common Inspection Framework should be amended to make clear that a secondary school whose careers provision is judged as “requires improvement” or “inadequate” cannot be judged to be “outstanding” overall; likewise, a secondary school should be unable to receive an overall judgment of “good” if its careers provision is judged to be “inadequate”.
Destination data
28.It was suggested that the publication of destination data could encourage schools to give greater priority to careers information, advice and guidance. Professor Sir John Holman told us that destination data incentivised schools because “it makes them show up how good they are at the thing that matters most of all to parents, which is ‘Will my child get a job?’”46 The Association of School and College Leaders said that destination data was especially powerful “when collected over a longer period so that the routes taken by young people beyond their first move out of school can be understood”.47
29.The Government currently publishes destination data for young people in the year after they complete their key stage 4 and key stage 5 studies. These data are available at an institution level, and include the proportion of young people going into further education, higher education, apprenticeships and employment. The latest data, for 2013/14, were published in January 2016.48 Some witnesses suggested that more timely data were needed. Anthony Barnes, a local authority inspector for careers education, welcomed the inclusion of apprenticeships within the data but told us that “the time lag is too long before the statistics appear”. He called for schools to “be encouraged to keep and analyse their own up-to-date data”.49
30.If destination data are to play a greater role in holding schools to account, consideration must also to be given to how they are used and interpreted. Sean Harford, from Ofsted, told us that the data played an important role in inspections and that when they were weak, “we would start asking questions about that; why those youngsters are not going on to places that we would expect them to go, given their attainment and given their interests when we speak with them”.50 We also received evidence questioning how different destinations should be valued. Future Academies asked:
Can destination measures be assessed differently so that university places are not seemed to be valued more highly than apprenticeships? When some higher level apprenticeships are harder to gain a place on than an Oxbridge college that must be madness.51
31.The Government told us that it had “already taken steps to improve the timeliness of the destination measures by again bringing forward the publication of the latest set of data”.52 In later evidence, it added that:
BIS, DfE, [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs] and [Department for Work and Pensions] have been working together to link education data to HMRC and DWP data. [ … ] This data will improve the robustness and coverage of employment destinations data and earnings outcome data.53
32.Destination data have an important role to play in ensuring schools can be held to account for their careers provision, including by Ofsted and parents. We welcome the Government’s work to improve the timeliness of destination data, and to link them to the data held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions. In our view, there is still more that should be done. To be fully useful, destination data should cover a period of five years, to allow for scrutiny of the pathways young people have chosen after they have completed their formal education and training. We invite the Government, in its response, to set out a comprehensive plan for improving destination data, including the timescales for doing so. This plan should include steps to make the data available in a more timely way and to ensure that they cover a longer period of time, and give more details on how the data will draw on information held by other Government departments. The Government should also consider how best to present its destination data, to mitigate the risk that schools are judged primarily on the number of their students going onto higher education.
15 Education Committee, Seventh Report of Session 2012–13, Careers Guidance for Young People: The impact of the new duty on schools, HC 632, para 31
16 Education Committee, Seventh Report of Session 2012–13, Careers Guidance for Young People: The impact of the new duty on schools, HC 632, para 32
17 See, for example, Fair Train (CAD 70), Career Development Institute (CAD 76) para 1.2, CSW Group (CAD 107) para 4, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (CAD 115) para 1.1
19 Evidence taken before the Education Committee on 16 September 2015, HC (2015–16) 400, Q26 [Sir Michael Wilshaw]
20 Professor Archer and Dr Moote described the ASPIRES 2 project as “the second phase of a major national longitudinal research project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, investigating young people’s science aspirations and career choices age 10-19”.
22 Q3
23 Q3
24 Q3
25 Q190. See Department for Education, Careers guidance and inspiration in schools: Statutory guidance for governing bodies, school leaders and school staff, March 2015.
26 Gatsby Foundation, Good Career Guidance, April 2014. For references to this report in our written evidence, see, for example, Reed in Partnership (CAD 4) para 15, National Association of Head Teachers (CAD 18) para 3 and UnLTD (CAD 24) paras 12 to 16. The submission from the Gatsby Foundation itself (CAD 8) summarises the research.
27 Gatsby Foundation, Good Career Guidance, April 2014, page 7
29 Q 135 [Claudia Harris]
32 Ofsted, Business partnerships and employer engagement supporting outstanding achievement: St Marylebone Church of England School, 11 February 2013
33 Q11
36 “New law will end ‘outdated snobbery’ towards apprenticeships”, Department for Education press release
37 Q114
38 Q249
39 The framework states that in making a judgment, inspectors will consider “whether the standard of education, training or care is good or outstanding. If it is not at least good, inspectors will consider whether it requires improvement or is inadequate”.
40 Ofsted, The common inspection framework: education, skills and early years, August 2015, paras 23–24
41 Ofsted, The common inspection framework: education, skills and early years, August 2015, para 31
44 Q178
45 Q249
46 Q24
48 Department for Education, Destinations of key stage 4 and key stage 5 pupils: 2014, 21 January 2016. Provisional data were published in October 2015.
50 Q178
© Parliamentary copyright 2015
4 July 2016