Careers Guidance in Schools

Christina Rees Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test before coming on to the estate. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. We are expecting a vote and I will suspend the sitting for 15 minutes when that occurs. I call Esther McVey to move the motion.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered careers guidance in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the Speaker for granting the debate. I should start by saying that my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, wanted to be here today, but unfortunately he has tested positive for covid and cannot join us. I know that careers guidance is a matter close to his heart, and I thank him for all the work that he has done on it.

One of my very first speeches in this House was on career guidance and extending opportunities to all. That was over a decade ago. It included reaching out to young girls and supporting them to climb the career ladder. It was about smashing glass ceilings, stopping stereotyping people, and knocking down the barriers that prevent people from achieving, succeeding and fulfilling their potential. I have written academic papers on this issue, worked on reports such as the “Genda Agenda” report and the Ideopolis report, and worked on the Merseyside Entrepreneurship Commission, which looked at the reasons why pupils from deprived areas were often half as likely to set up in business and twice as likely to claim benefit as people from more advantaged areas.

We looked at how to go about breaking those cycles, and the answer kept coming back to good-quality, consistent, regular careers advice and meeting inspirational role models—people young girls could learn from and, where possible, people from similar backgrounds who had managed to succeed, often against the odds, as well as people who young girls could really relate to and who would have an influence on what they were going to do as they got older.

Most advice, for most people, comes from people they know—from parents and friends. How big that pool is will determine how much those people come into a huge and different array of careers, so that pool needs to be widened if we want to widen opportunities for as many people as possible. How can children know what they want to do when they leave school if they are not told about the career opportunities available to them, the qualifications they will need and the different educational paths they can take to get there?

I hope Members can tell that I am as fired up by these issues today as I was more than a decade ago. I will declare an interest because, caught by the bug of supporting young people, I set up my own charity to do just that in 2013. It is called If Chloe Can and it provides careers advice to pupils up and down the country, particularly in years 8 and 9, and predominantly to disadvantaged pupils. It is supported by 200 role models who are successful individuals: Debbie Moore, the first woman to run a public limited company; Jo Salter, the first woman in the UK to fly a fighter plane; Professor Sarah Gilbert, who developed the AstraZeneca vaccine; and people such as Nick Knowles and James Dyson. The list goes on.

The charity provides careers advice, role models and confidence. It is about goal-setting, planning, communication, resilience and assertiveness. The charity used to go into schools and hold performances and plays, but all of that changed because of covid and lockdown, and so too must careers guidance.

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On resuming—

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

We will start again. Ms McVey, have you finished?

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

The timing was perfect, thank you.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Good timing, superb. We now move on to Back-Bench speakers. If you can confine yourselves to five minutes or less, we should get everyone in.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Before I call the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we have worked the intricate maths. The debate will finish at 5.41 pm. I will call the Opposition spokesperson at 5.23 pm, allowing the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) a couple of minutes to wind up the debate. Is everyone happy? Great.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to serve under your chairmanship once again, Ms Rees, renewing the relationship with you in charge and myself making a small contribution, as often happens in this Chamber. I thank the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) for setting the scene so well for each and every one of us. I know that the Minister has no responsibility for Northern Ireland; however, I will give a Northern Irish perspective, as I often do, to replicate and support what the right hon. Member for Tatton has said on the importance of careers choice and guidance in schools, and where we want to be on that matter.

It is a pleasure to be here and to participate in this debate. I have stated all too often that children are the future, and I believe that it is our responsibility to ensure that they have the platform and the opportunities to make the most of their lives in terms of employment. I think I recall intervening on the right hon. Lady when she spoke in a Friday debate—while I was in Parliament for my Automated External Defibrillators (Public Access) Bill—to support her as she once again pursued careers guidance for young people.

It is a great reassurance to know that the correct strategies are in place for schools. As the right hon. Lady and other hon. Members have said, it is very important for where we are with our schools and the guidance that they give. The preparing for success strategy, set out by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland, aims to develop more effective career decision makers, leading to increased and appropriate participation in education, training and employment. Schoolchildren in Northern Ireland choose their GCSEs in year 10, when they are 14 or 15 years old. It is fair to say that children are forced—albeit gently—to think about their futures at a young age, so it is essential that the support is in place to enable them to start doing that.

I have served on the board of governors of Glastry College, one of the schools in my constituency for—my goodness; I am just trying to think—more than 30 years. Although I did not attend that school, my boys did. What I have learned from being on the board of governors was that there is a chance to guide young people to where they want to be. Not everybody will be educationally inclined; some are more physically focused and want to work on farms or in factories, and there is plenty of choice for that in my constituency. The main thing is that young people understand the opportunities they have.

There are many schools in my constituency of Strangford that offer sixth-form education. In particular, I would like to mention the South Eastern Regional College in Newtownards, which has countless specialities for teens to take an interest in, whether in mechanics, beauty treatment, working in shops or managing a business—those courses are all there.

Recent statistics have shown that a massive 65% of those studying for a degree admit to having regrets about their academic choice. Further statistics show that two out of five schoolchildren in their final year of school would feel like a failure if they did not progress to university. Not everybody can, should or needs to go to university, but it is good to know that they will have that opportunity if they have the ability to do so. I must say that better careers guidance in schools has the potential to reduce those figures, which I find quite shocking. I have spoken to younger constituents who have said that their schools allocate each of them a careers adviser, with whom they have one-to-one chats throughout the years they are at school. I strongly encourage that not only in schools but in universities and colleges. Some children have little or no idea what they want to do in life, and that is just the way it is, but they do focus. I certainly ended up doing something that I never expected—I always had an interest in politics, but I never thought I would be here—and it is the same for many people.

The lack of careers guidance and support can factor into this. The JobReaders Academy has revealed that the second biggest factor in why six in every 100 pupils drop out of university is poor secondary school preparation. If that is where it starts, that is where things need to start improving. We must remember it is not solely down to secondary schools to teach our young people; the correct careers advice must be readily available in universities, too.

We must ensure that our schoolchildren are encouraged to start thinking about their futures. Yes, it is scary, and I cannot stand here today and say that when I was a wee boy, I was 100% sure what I wanted to be—apart from wanting to be a Royal Marines soldier, a train driver, a shopkeeper, a salesman and ultimately to have my own business. All those sorts of things go through someone’s mind when they are aged nought to 10, or nought to 16, and they may end up somewhere they did not expect to be.

Ofsted has revealed that schoolchildren want to see more information on the full range of courses run by FE colleges and other providers, since not everyone wants to do A-levels and go to university. It is essential that there is the opportunity to do that through careers guidance. We want all young people to have the same opportunities, if possible, but they will go their own ways.

I urge the Minister and the Department to work with their education counterparts in the devolved nations to ensure that children have access to all sorts of careers advice, and so that we can exchange ideas. I am sure that she does so regularly with her counterparts in the other regional Administrations. I believe that careers guidance should start in schools and not stop at university. Many young people from Northern Ireland end up at universities here in the mainland. Guidance should be available inside and outside education settings, and we must not let our youngest be hindered from reaching their full potential because they did not have the means to get there in the first place.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I am sorry, but we will have to go down to three and a half minutes.

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[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees, and also to point out to the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) that I was born on the council estate in Wythenshawe and made it to be an MP. So there we are: there is one already—more to follow.

We have a difficulty in Leicestershire in that all too often people get their first job, which is low paid and low skilled, and then remain in it. That is fine when people are living at home with their parents and single, but when they move on to have a family or want to move to another place, then it is more difficult. I have been working on a life skills project for a couple of years, alongside Barclays, Communities that Work and East Midlands Housing, to try and promote ways of being able to pay rent and move on in life by getting additional skills. Really, I am just following on from my predecessor, the wonderful Baroness Morgan of Cotes, who worked on a project with Loughborough College called Bridge to Work and is now on the board of the Careers & Enterprise Company, working along the same lines as Bridge to Work when it started out.

Since setting up the Careers & Enterprise Company and the careers hubs in the area, we have retrieved all sorts of good statistics that meet the Gatsby model. For example, more than six in 10 schools nationally are taught maths and English in a way that links lessons to jobs and careers—a 44% increase on 2019. Nine in 10 colleges also taught the curriculum in a way that highlighted the relevance of a subject to future career paths, and 84% of schools provided information about apprenticeships to their students. Those are some of the achievements that the Careers and Enterprise Company has highlighted.

I want to highlight three excellent examples in Loughborough. Limehurst Academy’s work is spearheaded by the proactivity of its wonderful head, Jonathan Mellor. It has embedded careers education across the academy’s curriculum, from subject areas right through to personal development, citizenship and targeted interventions, as has Rawlins Academy, which is also leading the way. It has rewritten its careers education programme from start to finish to build careers conversations into every subject area. Finally, there is the Careers and Enterprise Hub that is funded by the town deal fund in Loughborough. It is central to the town, providing careers advice and a way to access jobs and to meet with employers; there are interviews and seminars within the building, and it really works.

One of the points I want to raise with the Minister is access to careers advice from a younger age. I believe that the Careers and Enterprise Company focuses on years 8 to 13, but we should look at year 7 or even younger. After I passed my 11-plus, I went to a state grammar school in Congleton in Cheshire, and I had only been there a matter of weeks, when, at 11 years old, Mrs Hall said to me, “Which university have you thought about going to?” I had never even thought about going to university—I was the first in my family to do so—but these points need to be considered.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I call Mark Fletcher. Unfortunately, you have a very short time, but go for it.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

Thank you, Ms Rees. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) gave a storming speech. The quickest way to summarise my speech would be to say I agree with everything she said—I thought it was marvellous. I declare my interest as a governor at two schools in my constituency.

When it comes to the challenge of levelling up, careers guidance is absolutely central to what we are trying to do. Effectively, levelling up is correcting market failure in one of four areas—housing, infrastructure, skilled jobs or having a skilled and educated workforce. As an MP who represents an ex-mining area as I do in Bolsover, the problem is very specifically about looking at having a skilled workforce and skilled jobs in the area. We do not have a history of that.

We have a history of mining, and that creates a cultural challenge, and a gap in aspirations that needs to be corrected. Whether that comes from parents, schools, the community, or—even better—from all three together, we need to be able to change the culture of an area over time, and careers guidance is absolutely central to that. I am not going to look the Chair in the eye because it is very off-putting—I do not know when I have to sit down—so I will carry on regardless.

There are three incredibly important points to make. The first is about pathways. My right hon. Friend outlined quite beautifully that young people need to be able to understand what careers are available to them, which can be incredibly difficult unless they come into contact with those careers. We need clear role models—identifiable, local role models—and to work with employers in the local area to be able to say, “This is what you can do.”

The second point is about aspiration, and the mindset—encouraging young people, wherever they are from, that they can achieve things and making that clear. The third point is reinforcement—saying over and over again that someone can achieve what they need to achieve.

I could not agree more with the need to start young, and to continue with careers guidance. That is such a crucial point—I ruined my notes by scribbling it down. It is unbelievably important. The point on supporting not just academic pathways, but technical ones, and the importance of having provision—

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Opposition spokesperson, Stephen Morgan.

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[Michelle Donelan]

I can confirm that. Ofsted is now playing a much more active role in looking at the careers support and guidance that is available to schools, including their utilisation of the Baker clause, so that we do not have the postcode lottery to which the hon. Member for Portsmouth South referred. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton spoke in support of the Education (Careers Guidance in Schools) Bill, which is sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson). The Government wholeheartedly support that important Bill, which will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) outlined, extend careers provision to all pupils in state education, bringing year 7 and upwards into scope for the first time—something that my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) called for in the debate. The Bill will also place a duty on all academy schools and alternative provision academies.

Through the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, we are also improving access to colleges and opportunities so that young people can hear directly from providers of approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships about the wide range of opportunities that are open to them beyond school. A recent report by The Careers & Enterprise Company shows why that is so important. Uptake of apprenticeships was 16% higher in the schools that provided information on apprenticeships to most or all of their students, compared with the schools that provided information to a small minority.

It is for that very reason that we have taken such committed action in this area. First, we have put in place support to help schools to develop their careers offer so that pupils have much more comprehensive support, something that was stressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). That support helps them to plan for the next stages in their lives.

The Gatsby benchmarks, for example, are eight clear benchmarks recommended in the “Good Career Guidance” report produced by Gatsby, a leading education charity. Data from schools in England has shown that when all eight Gatsby benchmarks are met, the proportion of students in sustained post-16 education, employment or training rises by nearly 10%. In disadvantaged areas, that same figure rises by a staggering 20%. We have adopted the Gatsby benchmarks as our career framework for secondary schools and colleges. They are based on robust international evidence and they provide a clear definition of what world-class careers guidance really looks like.

In fact, we are investing £28 million this year for the CEC to support schools and colleges to implement the Gatsby benchmarks. That is part of a total £100 million investment in careers guidance for the financial year 2021-22. New careers hubs allow schools and colleges to form strong local partnerships with businesses, providers and the voluntary sector so that they can collaborate and improve careers guidance. By September 2021, two thirds of schools and colleges in England were already part of the careers hub. Additionally, careers leaders are a brand-new workforce of specially trained staff who will drive forward careers programmes in schools and colleges. Since the launch of the training in September 2018, more than 2,200 careers leaders have engaged in the funded training. In addition, around 4,000 senior business volunteers are now working as enterprise advisers to schools and colleges.

Already 21 secondary schools and colleges in the Cheshire and Warrington LEP are in a careers hub, and enterprise advisers are already matched with 90% of schools and colleges across the area. Of those enterprise advisers, 64% are sourced from small and medium enterprises, and I am pleased to say that 52% are female.

To return to the importance of role models, our funding is helping to increase young people’s exposure to employers and the world of work. That includes schools and colleges linking up with providers and employers that offer mentoring opportunities.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton also raised important points about the work of the CEC in relation to the National Careers Service. Sir John Holman has been tasked with making recommendations to drive greater alignment and collaboration between the CEC and the service. I am pleased to inform my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) that those findings will be published in the summer. I am sure that hon. Members will be updated as and when those responses are forthcoming. It is a brilliant achievement that, through the CEC, we are now working with 300 cornerstone employers to challenge those negative stereotypes identified by Members to—as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) put it—instil aspiration and understanding of the opportunities available. Those employers are working closely with local partnerships at schools and colleges to support employer encounters and ensure that young people are exposed to the world of work and the broad possibilities of potential career paths lying ahead.

Employers such as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Gatwick airport and Hilton hotels have seen benefits from their roles as cornerstone employers in developing their pipeline of skilled employees. As a cornerstone employer, Pinewood Studios has recently co-designed immersive maths lessons for pupils at 21 different secondary schools. Thanks to that partnership, 14,000 young people are now learning about careers in new ways, and the ambition is to showcase those lessons to hundreds more schools in the coming years.

With those achievements in mind, I want to conclude with a look ahead to the future. Our skills revolution, combined with an innovative new careers guidance system, will help to lead millions of young people into the careers that suit them. Initiatives like If Chloe Can are helping to drive us forward. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton is due to meet the Secretary of State for Education to explore how we can collaborate and build on that excellent work. I am sure that the skills Minister will be only too happy to join that meeting.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Esther McVey, you have one minute.