Careers Guidance in Schools

Anna Firth Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees.

The push by both parties over many years to get children to university has been a huge step in the right direction for many people and for social mobility. Now, a record 37.9% of young people go to university, but I believe we need to focus more on the careers guidance young people are given, especially the 60% of them who will not go to university. I have been hosting students from my constituency all summer—indeed, I have one sitting behind me—and it has given me a real insight into how they are taught at school. Not a single one of my holiday students thinks there is credible path to a good career other than going to university. Clearly, then, although university is the right path for many, we are not focusing enough on the 60% who do not go to university. Because the university “brand” has become so established and embedded, careers advice has to start as early as primary school if it is to be effective and to change hearts and minds.

One of the best schemes developed under the Conservatives has been apprenticeships, which allow people to gain qualifications and training on the job and to equip themselves with the skills they need to succeed in jobs across all sectors. I am proud to say that in Southend West, we have 830 young people undertaking apprenticeships, and 290 started a new apprenticeship this academic year. I applaud the local businesses that support these schemes, and I am delighted that Southend airport is to welcome two brand-new apprenticeships in the coming weeks.

Now, however, there are brilliant degree apprenticeships, which enable people not only to gain a full undergraduate or masters degree, but to earn while they do it and of course have a job at the end of it. Degree apprenticeships take between three and six years to complete, depending on the course level, with people spending most of their time working. They might attend university for one or two days a week, or in short blocks of, say, a week at a time, but overall people spend about 20% of their time studying and 80% working.

People leave a completed degree apprenticeship with no debt, having gained huge transferable skills, and with a good job to walk straight into. It really is a win-win-win for our young people, but sadly they are not being directed toward degree apprenticeships. According to the Centre for Social Justice, only 41% of 11 to 16-year-olds said that a teacher had discussed apprenticeships with them, and just 21% of teachers were reported to advise high-performing students to take an apprenticeship rather than a university place. That is backed up clearly by my experience of touring schools and talking to students across my constituency. This needs to change.

Many jobs vital to our economy require skills in science, technology, engineering, manufacturing and maths —skills that could be taught better and more effectively through apprenticeships. I am sure the Minister agrees with me that careers advisers in schools must do better on encouraging pupils to consider apprenticeships, particularly degree apprenticeships.

For many years, the only option at 16 was A-levels. I am pleased that the Conservatives have been working hard to change that, and we have made excellent progress. The Education Committee is reviewing and working on a huge report on the subject. Another option now is T-levels, which provide an excellent way for students to gain a high-quality technical qualification with the same prestige as A-levels. Sadly though, hardly any young people know about T-levels—none of my work experience students had even heard of them. That is simply not good enough. I am sure the Government want to improve the situation. Careers advisers in schools must ensure that students understand the full gamut of opportunities available to them, and that they abide by the Baker clause in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017, which requires schools to discuss technical education options with pupils.

Our children deserve the best-quality education, which must include the best-quality advice to achieve their dreams. Southend West is blessed with many high-tech industries that already, as I always tell the Chancellor, contribute more than £3 billion to the UK economy each year. Our children must be given the right careers advice to enable them to achieve their potential, whatever form that takes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Thank you, Ms Rees, for calling me to speak in this really interesting debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for approaching it in exactly the right way.

My earlier intervention, about tracking where our young people go next after leaving school, still stands, and it is a point that I am pleased to be able to expand on. We know when people are not going to achieve their desired outcomes or pass their exams: when they go AWOL and fall off the radar. I know from my previous role as employment Minister that the next time we pick them up, in a jobcentre and on to the next stage in their careers, is quite often after they have had a stay at the Ministry of Justice, or developed health conditions, addictions or other challenges that need to be unpicked. I strongly believe that, with the right interventions in the mid-teenage years, we can ensure that everybody can go into a fulfilling career. If exams and university are not the route, that really matters—as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), that applies to 60% of our young people.

I would like us to talk, in schools and more broadly, about the reality of a life of jobs. Unless people are very lucky, they do not go into a career or get a job for life—career-wise, we all live in insecure times in this place. We need to speak about jobs, roles and sectors, and about things changing, to inspire and enable our kids to take the opportunity of education into the world of work and not feel that education and learning happens only in schools, colleges or universities, or that it always has a label, like T-levels or indeed A-levels. Rather, it is absolutely part of working life. Some of us might have been in a very different job five years ago, and we might not even know about the job that we could have in five years’ time.

We need to empower our young people not to think that studying happens purely at school, college or university, but to understand that it is never over and that what they get from a good education—learning and having the confidence to take on new skills and abilities—is what they need to take them into a long-term career. We need to build an agile mindset into our young people. We need to help people to be ready to join the labour market at any age or any stage.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to the Front Bench—it is good to see her there. With my former employment Minister hat on, let me say that we should also absolutely tackle job snobbery. There is no such thing as good or bad work. We have all done jobs that we did not generally enjoy quite so much—they are less lucrative and “valuable” in people’s minds. But let us be honest that during the pandemic we started to understand who and what really meant everything to our lives. Many of those people were performing roles that, coming into the pandemic, we simply did not understand or fully appreciate. The mantra should be ABC—any job, better job, career—because guess what: people are never more attractive than when they are in a job. That is wrong, but it is a fact, because those soft skills and that confidence—I wish I had a penny for every time I heard the word “confidence” when it comes to changing or transitioning roles because of the pandemic—are absolutely key.

We need to instil that confidence through good careers advice in our schools and allow them to open up and spend time with their local economies. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) about that. People could live right next to the Cadbury factory or the theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, but have never been inside. People can feel very locked out, even in their own communities. Schools should not just be unlocking careers or education, but should be unlocking opportunity that is right on the doorstep. No one should need to move to find opportunity.

[Anna Firth]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend that schools should be the ones to give this advice. I raised the issue this morning with the headmaster of Westcliff High School for Boys, which is in my patch, and he said that one size does not fit all. The funding for careers advice must go to schools, because they know their local area and the different opportunities that are available. Does my hon. Friend agree that we absolutely must put schools in charge of this funding and this advice?