Careers Education for Students

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for introducing this debate, and I acknowledge his commitment and expertise, as well as the very comprehensive way in which he introduced the debate. The importance of this subject is reflected in the excellent briefings that we have received from a very wide range of people and organisations. We are most grateful to them for engaging with us, as we are to the Library for its briefing. We have heard enthusiasm for this topic from all sides of the House.

I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, on her inspiring maiden speech, which particularly highlighted the need for social mobility. Her expertise will be warmly welcomed in this House and we look forward to hearing from her on many occasions.

If we are sharing our own careers advice, I should tell your Lordships that an adviser came to my girls’ school and said, “Well girls, a few of you will go to university, so we don’t need to worry about you. Most of you will get married, so we don’t have to worry about you. The rest of you can think about being a teacher, a nurse or a secretary”. It was truly empowering.

Good careers education and advice is essential if young people are to find work that matches their skills and aspirations. We face an acute skills shortage, which will be much worse without EU workers, so this is crucial for the country as well as for individuals. However, for many years we have lacked a cohort of professional careers advisers who can open young people’s eyes to a range of work opportunities. If, from very young, they can see work which matches their skills and enthusiasms, not only does school work start to look more relevant but they gain self-confidence, especially where academic work is not their forte.

I entirely endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bull and Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in eloquently supporting the creative industries. They are enormously important. As a fellow linguist, I also entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, when she says that language learning is very important in gaining a proper and broad vision of careers.

We know that young people gender-stereotype work from a very young age. Boys are seen to be good for engineering, business and construction and for becoming doctors; girls for caring, hairdressing, nursing and teaching. Well-paid industrial jobs are for the boys and the lower-paid service sector is for the girls. But of course skills and aptitudes are not gender-based. We have some brilliant women engineers and entrepreneurs and brilliant men hairdressers and teachers. All options should be open to all. It is vital to break down these stereotypes from the earliest years and to encourage young women in particular to see the rewards of careers in engineering, construction, the police and fire services, flying and many other walks of life which are heavily male dominated. Language in this area is important. We need to be sure that we talk about firefighters and police officers, not policemen and firemen, and to make it quite clear that engineering is not all about greasy overalls, nor construction all about muddy fields. There are great and very varied job opportunities for girls as well as for boys.

I do not think that there has ever been a golden age of careers education and advice, but we did once have dedicated professional careers advisers, who are now a dying breed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, set out. Government policies mean that schools have too many pressures to channel pupils into the academic routes which gain them kudos and funding. Teachers will generally themselves have followed academic routes and they are unlikely to have the time or expertise to set out the skills needed to be a builder, a pilot or a chef, where vocational rather than academic skills are more important than GCSEs and A-levels. The dreaded pressures of GCSE and A-level bedevil those skilled and able students whose inclinations take them towards practical, work-based qualifications.

Non-academic skills such as empathy, resilience and communication have been proved to lead to better well-being, higher academic attainment and greater employability. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, talked about these wider skills. What are the Government doing to encourage schools to develop such non-academic skills in their students? Government policy needs to encourage young people into work which suits them, rather than pushing them towards inappropriate university degrees.

Last December, the Government produced their Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential plan. This was aimed at boosting skills and confidence to make the leap from education into work, raising career aspirations and building a new type of partnership with businesses to improve advice, information and experiences for young people. It aimed to improve social mobility through education and reduce attainment gaps between disadvantaged children and their affluent peers. There has been much mention today of social mobility, including from the right reverend Prelate. God certainly moves in mysterious ways, but He does not seem to consult much.

We have seen the national collaborative outreach programme encourage progression to higher education in areas with lower levels of participation, which raises the question of whether greater support is needed to engage and inform parents and guardians of the post-16 educational opportunities available. Enabling better social mobility is at the very heart of good careers advice. By the way, we should not forget careers advice in universities. We tend to concentrate on schools, which are vitally important, but at university often people have not sorted out what their careers are going to be and advice at that stage is also important.

As we have heard, there is a growing need for STEM skills, but not at the expense of creative skills. Will these plans increase student encounters with STEM employers, including SMEs, to encourage greater interest among pupils? Does greater attention need to be paid to the quality of teaching to ensure that children are well prepared to pursue a career in STEM subjects?

The careers strategy and the statutory guidance which followed in January have been welcome moves by a Government who have not shown much interest in careers for some time. In July, I asked a question of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, who was due to respond to this debate but has delegated it to the noble Viscount. I trust he was not frightened off by his somewhat inadequate answers to my questions about careers advice for primary school children, but of course we welcome the noble Viscount in his place. I agree with my noble friend Lord Storey about the excitement and effectiveness of the Top Trumps game for children, although Top Trumps may not be the most appropriate terminology in this day and age.

I pointed out in my Question that the National Association of Head Teachers, to which about 98% of primary head teachers belong, has over the past five years developed a brilliant programme, Primary Futures, which has attracted international recognition—it even gets a mention in the DfE’s careers strategy. It gets volunteers from the world of work to go into schools to inspire and motivate children and open opportunities for them.

The Minister replied that the Government had chosen to ignore the professionals and instead give £2 million to the Careers and Enterprise Company to replicate this work in order to extend the Gatsby benchmark programme. With great respect, I ask again why the Government are not throwing their weight behind the NAHT’s brilliant programme and helping it to be rolled out across primary schools in the country. The programme has been developed by people who devote their professional lives to enhancing opportunities for young people. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who once upon a time was my noble friend—happy days—in welcoming the CEC. The company benefits from many teachers’ advice, but the NAHT is exclusively teacher and pupil-based and really knows what is best.

We hear from the British Youth Council that work experience has been one of their main concerns. Work experience hubs for 11 to18 year-olds was the number two issue in the 2017 Make Your Mark consultation and was debated in the House of Commons in November 2017. What progress is being made with these hubs?

The Youth Select Committee, a British Youth Council initiative, has raised many concerns about the idea of quality work experience, the role of careers advice and the disparity and provision based on where young people live and the type of school they attend, their household income, and the connections—or lack thereof—of their parents. It is important to address all these things.

The Careers and Enterprise Company has a real task ahead of it. It needs to act, and act fast. What progress has been made in the rollout of enterprise advisers in schools and what impact are they having, particularly in disadvantaged schools? Does the CEC have plans to trial and identify what works in careers advice for pupils from lower socioeconomic backgrounds? Surely it is time for a powerful national strategy, with national support for good, professional careers education and advice. Our young people deserve no less and the country needs it.