Careers Guidance

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I am delighted to be here to lead this debate under your august chairmanship, Mr Benton, and to have the opportunity to discuss my Committee’s report. I am also pleased to be joined by so many Committee members and ex-members, and to see that all three main parties are represented in the debate. The reason why we are here is that the ministerial decisions considered in our report will have profound and far-reaching consequences. Young people need good-quality careers guidance if they are to make informed choices about the courses that they take at school and their options when they leave school. That is all the more important now due to the difficult economic backdrop.

Is such good advice typically available? No. It is worth putting on record that the Government inherited a bad situation: a dysfunctional system of careers guidance. In 2009, the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions reported on the low level of satisfaction with the careers guidance work provided by the Connexions service, which is little mourned overall. In 2010, Ofsted criticised inconsistencies in provision.

The Education Act 2011 represented a chance for a fresh start. The Education Committee’s report was prompted by the introduction of the new statutory duty on schools to secure access to independent, impartial careers guidance for pupils in years 9 to 11. The Committee came to the conclusion that the transfer of responsibility to schools was regrettable, as was the way it was done. Our view was prompted not by any nostalgia for the previous arrangements but by concern about how the transfer was implemented. At the time, Ministers had other priorities. They were under great budgetary pressure, and careers guidance lost out. None of the £196 million in funding that the Connexions service received for its careers guidance work—£196 million to provide the signposting that we argue is vital for young people to make the right choices and ensure that the public money that serves their needs is spent in the right way—was passed to schools.

Following the change, a survey by Careers England found that only one in six schools had the same level of investment in careers activities as the year before. That is, one in six maintained what they had. The Minister needs to take that seriously. The survey also found that not a single school had increased its level of investment, even after the Connexions service, however patchy its performance, had been removed from the scene.

Evidence from countries that have transferred responsibility for careers guidance to schools, such as the Netherlands and New Zealand, does not support that approach. In those countries, the schools were at least given funding to supply the service when they were given the duty to do so; nevertheless, the Committee was told that even there, the transfer of the duty had resulted in a significant reduction in both the quality and extent of careers guidance provision in schools. That is why we described the transfer of responsibility as regrettable, much to the Government’s chagrin.

Separately, the OECD has highlighted the limitations of a purely school-based model of careers advice. They include lack of impartiality, weak links with the labour market and inconsistency of provision between schools. That matters, because young people need guidance in order to make good decisions. A recent study by the Education and Employers Taskforce, led by Nick Chambers, underlined the problem. The taskforce surveyed 11,000 13 to 16-year-olds, mapping their job ambitions against the employment market up to 2020. It showed that teenagers have a weak grasp of the availability of certain jobs. For example, 10 times as many youngsters as there are jobs likely to be available were aiming for jobs in the culture, media and sports sector.

I acknowledge the pressing need to deliver spending efficiencies where possible, but this is not a spending efficiency; it is the promotion of spending inefficiency, as we waste money by placing students on the wrong courses. When the Committee visited Bradford college in October last year, I met a young man whose experience typifies the waste of time, money and potential to which poor careers guidance, or the complete lack of it, can lead. He was taking a course to join the uniformed services. He had wasted the previous year on a course that was not right for him and would not have led to a job in the fire service, which he wanted to join. To add insult to injury, this young man, who wanted to be a fireman, found out during the appropriate course that the fire service is now shrinking, and that there was unlikely to be a job for him at the end of his course. The system let that young man down, and it is doing the country no good at all. How did it happen? He did not receive proper guidance about the courses that he needed to realise his dreams, or even guidance about the dreams that he had a chance of realising.

That is just one anecdotal example. When the experience is scaled up, huge amounts of money are being wasted. With youth unemployment at 21% and the CBI currently characterising the transition from school to work as “chaotic”, the policy smacks of false economy.

None the less, the Committee accepts that the new arrangements involving the statutory duty on schools are in place, and being so freshly put on the statute book, are not immediately likely to change. Schools have the duty. If I appear to be giving the new Minister a hard time, I recognise that he only has one foot in the Department for Education, whose performance on the issue has been so woeful. He also has responsibility in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, whose performance has been much better.

The launch of the National Careers Service is a huge boost to careers guidance for adults. It is essential in an integrated and competitive world, and it is re- professionalising careers advice. The Committee was therefore pleased—nay, delighted—that the Government accepted our recommendation that the remit of the National Careers Service should be expanded to enable it to perform a capacity-building and brokerage role for schools.

On the subject of the NCS, I note with regret the recent resignations of Heather Jackson and Professor Tony Watts from the National Careers Council because they believe that the Department for Education has been “escaping its responsibilities” by proposing that the funding provided by BIS for the National Careers Service should be stretched to fill the gaps in services for young people. They observe that the Department for Education has provided the NCS with only £7 million in funding, compared to the £83 million that BIS has provided for adult careers services.

Will the Minister reassure us that the Department for Education is committed to supporting the work of the NCS properly? Will the Department realise the opportunity that the NCS provides to ensure that we have an all- ages, competent, re-professionalised careers service? An opportunity has arisen from the Government policy that established the NCS. An extra £50 million in funding, set against the £56 billion education budget, could make a huge difference and deliver a much more sophisticated and responsive service.

There are some changes that the Committee welcomed. We were pleased by the decision to expand the duty on schools to offer careers guidance down to pupils in year 8, and up to 16 to 18-year-olds in school or college. We think that was logical, and our Committee heard strong evidence for doing it. It might seem an obvious thing to do, but the Government should none the less be congratulated on doing it. That decision was taken during the course of our inquiry. I know that Ministers always—well, mostly—take note of the powerful arguments coming from our Committee, which makes for a much more coherent policy. It is a big win for young people, particularly those about to leave the school system, and I congratulate Ministers.

However, the Committee was disappointed that the Government rejected several of our other recommendations. We advised that each young person should be entitled to at least one face-to-face careers interview with an independent adviser, an opportunity that 98% of schools consider important. We also suggested that schools should be required to publish an annual careers plan setting out information about the careers guidance provided to pupils and the resources allocated to it. Careers plans could form an important part of the new accountability regime for schools. At the moment, schools simply do not see careers advice as a priority. Being obliged to publish their plans would put them under pressure to deliver in that area and not merely to focus on things such as GCSEs, which tend to drive behaviour in secondary schools.

Regrettably, neither of those recommendations has been adopted. Like all organisations, schools are driven by the things on which they are evaluated, and they are not evaluated on careers advice—except during Ofsted’s rare visits—so it gets neglected by head teachers.

We welcome Ofsted’s ongoing thematic review of careers advice and guidance, which is due to report this summer, but Ofsted’s routine inspection framework for schools is simply not designed to make a clear judgment on careers guidance provision, as Ofsted itself acknowledges. Accordingly, we urged Ministers to pursue the development of more sophisticated education destination measures, to make the data analysis more meaningful.

Only yesterday, I questioned the Secretary of State for Education before the Select Committee. He apologised for failing to include destination measures in the Government’s accountability consultation for schools, and he made a commitment to do further work to strengthen the accountability proposals in that way. We support our Ministers’ ambition to expand the time frame of the destination measures and to try to make them a reliable set of data that can be used to hold schools to account—something which, for now, we do not do.

Careers guidance can provide a crucial signpost for rewarding employment. It can help young people—such as the young man I met in Bradford—to make the right choices first time. With the right advice, that young man could have a clear sense of where his opportunities lie. If the fire service was not recruiting, he could explore a job with another branch of the services, such as the Army. He would not waste time repeating a year, and could get a job when he left education. High-quality, independent and impartial advice has a key role to play in helping pupils to make good choices. If the system fails young people, a human and economic cost is incurred, by both the young people and the wider society that risks squandering their talents.

In their response to our report, the Government complained that the Committee

“focuses on the process of planning and providing careers guidance, whereas the Government’s priority is outcomes for young people.”

With respect to Ministers, our so-called process points were about ensuring that young people can access proper careers advice, at a time when five in six schools are cutting back on it. That could help to prevent obvious mistakes. For example, our report highlights the lack of awareness in many schools regarding apprenticeships, despite their being a flagship coalition policy.

Ministers assume that schools will always do the best thing for the children in their care but, in reality, schools will deliver what they are measured on. The system will not deliver when schools are not evaluated on the quality of the careers guidance they provide, and when they are not given funding to supply it. In truth, the Committee is perhaps better focused on outcomes than Ministers who made such a hash of the policy in the DFE.

What is the point of all the education reforms the Government have undertaken, if there is no decent signposting between education and the world of employment? The honourable exception is the new National Careers Service, which needs proper funding if it is to expand its remit and do a good job for the young as well as the old. But if Ministers think that this is about process, I assure them that it is not. It is about our Committee, working on a cross-party basis, recognising that careers services for young people are not up to the job, and identifying what needs to change.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

Mr Benton, I recall that you chaired the very first Westminster Hall debate I ever took part in, when I first arrived here in 2010 and had absolutely no idea what was going on. It is, therefore, a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, when I hope I know a bit more about what is going on—we will see. It is also a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), and to welcome him back to Parliament and witness his speedy recovery.

I want to talk today about the Committee’s report, and a little about the Government’s response. In taking evidence from many of those involved in the education of young people, the Committee visited careers services and schools, looking at what good practice was emerging, and identifying where deficiencies were most acute. Most importantly, perhaps, we also spoke to young people themselves about the services they received. The crux of our findings is wrapped up at the start of our report:

“The Government’s decision to transfer responsibility for careers guidance to schools is regrettable.”

We had a lot of discussion in the Committee about using “regrettable”. We could easily have used much stronger language, but we were looking for something that would be helpful to the Government rather than something that would be seen as lecturing.

Secondly, we found that international evidence suggests that a school-based model does not deliver the best provision for young people, and we concluded that the weakness of that model had been compounded by the Government’s failure to transfer any budget to schools with which to support the service. That led, predictably and perhaps inevitably, to a drop in overall provision, with fewer than one in six schools providing anything like a reasonable service.

In its inquiry, the Committee was very realistic about the historical performance of career services and Connexions, and did not see the previous service provided to young people as good or not in need of considerable reform. It was clear to us that the Connexions service had fallen well short of expectations in most areas, with the probable exception of its services for vulnerable children, where I think that the level of provision and service was at least reasonable if not good. It was also clear that the service delivered far from the high expectations that the Government had of it on its creation.

However, the Government’s response has been not to reform the Connexions service but to abolish it altogether, transferring the statutory duty to schools, and not providing any of the £196 million of funding that was previously available for the service. That is leaving schools and pupils high and dry, and it is clear that young people will make less informed decisions and choices about their future education and training as a result. That will have a major, negative and long-term impact on the lives of some young people, and it will be those who do not have access, within their families and family circles, to well-informed professional advice who will be hardest hit and lose out the most.

It is fair to say that we were dismayed by what we found, but we chose our wording carefully. We spent a long time discussing what we wanted from the report. We wanted the Government to recognise that the current situation could not continue, and to take action to improve it. We wanted to agree on language that did not solely focus on the problems or lecture the Government about what was going wrong, but provided an honest analysis of what we found, and offered positive recommendations about how the current situation could be improved. We were particularly disappointed, therefore, by both the tone and content of the Government’s response.

The Government’s response tells us:

“While the Committee’s report does acknowledge the failings of the Connexions service we are disappointed that the Committee describes our decision to transfer responsibility for careers to schools as regrettable.”

We found it regrettable not because of the transfer, or even because it happened against international evidence that suggested it was the model that was least likely to succeed, but because responsibility was transferred with all its limitations but without any funding. It was surely bound to fail, and the failure would be regrettable.

Instead of acknowledging that they might have got it wrong, and considering the Committee’s recommendations for improvement, the Government’s response appears to focus on criticising how the inquiry was carried out, stating that we cited evidence of one survey carried out by the careers sector that suggested a reduction in service. I want to tell the Minister that we based our findings not just on one survey: we listened to a huge amount of evidence from schools, local authorities, careers specialists, employers, sixth-form college representatives, further education colleges, teachers’ representatives and head teachers’ representatives, and we listened to what young people told us about the service they received. If that is not enough, I suggest to the Minister that he look at what is happening in schools now. Careers provision for schoolchildren has largely collapsed.

I was a member of the Education Bill Committee more than two years ago, and we discussed at length what was happening then. The then Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), at least acknowledged that there were problems, recognised what was happening and promised to look at the matter, but I understand that he was subsequently blocked from doing so by the Secretary of State for Education. That is regrettable. If the Minister is not convinced by our report, I suggest he talk to the people we talked to and come back and tell us that the system works well.

The Government’s response also complained that the Committee chose not to highlight examples of good practice. I disagree. We went to places such as Bradford, and looked at where local authorities and schools were working together, pooling resources and delivering a good service. It was clear, however, that even where there was good practice, they were doing it on very little funding, or by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul—taking money from other parts of the education service to deliver the bones of a careers service for young people.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Does the hon. Lady recall that in Bradford, where nearly all the schools signed up, money was taken from each of them, but the bulk of it was still provided by the council? Adding all that up, if I recollect correctly, the service provision of careers guidance—in a place such as Bradford, where the council had made it a priority—was still lower on the ground in schools than it had been.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton, and to follow the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker), who talks of his steel roots. I represent a steel town, so I hope that a thread of steel runs through this debate, which started so well with the Chair of the Select Committee elegantly setting out his stall. He explained why the Committee described the transfer as having been handled “regrettably” and the fact that the resources were not passed to schools along with the responsibility. I was pleased too to hear my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) express disappointment at the Government’s defensive reaction to the report.

The Minister does not have to be defensive. He has the opportunity today to respond to the concerns that are expressed and stride forward rather than glance backwards. Knowing the Minister as I do, I am sure that that is what he will do at the end of the debate.

The hon. Member for Calder Valley explained very well the need for careers guidance to be seen not only in a national context but in a local one, too, and to be matched to the needs of the local region and local area. For the past year, I have been privileged to serve as chair of the Humber Skills Commission, on behalf of the Humber local enterprise partnership, which has people from large and small businesses from across the region represented on its board.

When I took both written and oral evidence from businesses across the Humber, I heard what they were saying about the challenges in skills that face them. To my surprise, career education and guidance came out as a strong concern; indeed, it is one of the prime areas in our report, which we are finalising at the moment.

Let me pause to pick out the points that the commission highlighted. Interestingly, those points, which come from a regional perspective, accord with what the Select Committee has found nationally. First, it was noted that information, advice and guidance is frequently not impartial or focused enough. Secondly, many young people do not know about the roles that are available; they are just not aware of the jobs and roles that are available either locally or nationally. As the Chair of the Select Committee said, there is a mismatch between what they might be interested in and what jobs are there. Thirdly, it was said that we need more employers involved in mentoring and coaching, but we need an infrastructure to make that happen. If the money has been taken away and the responsibility transferred, how does that happen?

Fourthly, the commission noted that labour market information is insufficient and restricted—a key point made by the Chair of the Select Committee at the start of the debate. Career opportunities need to be sold to young people, so a process is needed by which their eyes are opened. The hon. Member for Calder Valley talked about inspirational teachers, but we could have inspirational careers advisers, too.

The commission also said that parents need to understand the opportunities that are available for their children. It is important that they have access to advice and guidance as well. There is a lack of information with regard to opportunities in the offshore wind industry and the supply chain. Given that there is a big opportunity in such an industry, it was quite a stark moment to realise how little was known about it within the educational system, which needs to be preparing people for the jobs of today and tomorrow and not the jobs of yesterday.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the National Careers Service’s initiative offers a huge opportunity? It is embryonic at the moment, but it is building for adults that kind of local labour market knowledge. Having started to gather that information, why on earth would we not want to leverage that for young people as well? Furthermore, does he agree that if the Government found from the Department for Education not necessarily the kind of money that they were spending on Connexions but a fraction of that and put additional resource into the NCS, they could build on a coalition and the successful policy of the NCS and turn all careers advice for young people in the right direction?

[Nic Dakin]

The Chair of the Select Committee is prescient, because the last thing the Humber commission found was a mismatch between the standard of support for young people and adults, with adults generally getting a better service. The Chairman is absolutely right and he lays down the challenge to the Minister, but the Minister can be inventive. We have heard one way forward. Another way would be to provide the resources to local enterprise partnerships. The matter could then be taken forward through city deals to allow the LEPs to innovate. The Chairman gives a good way forward, but there are other ways, and I am sure the Minister will be up for taking on board those interesting ideas.

Let me draw attention to the concerns of the Association of Colleges—this is coming from my background as a college principal. There is concern at the moment about the perverse incentives in the current system, which allow new schools to be established even where there is an over-supply of places. When that happens, we create a competitive environment in which schools are trying to maintain their pupil numbers through compulsory education up to 18 years old. That militates against the provision of truly independent information, advice and guidance because such advice might, for example, recommend that a young person remains in the school because that benefits the school but not necessarily the young person. Independence of advice is crucial; otherwise we get the outcomes that have already been described in this debate that are not in the interests of either young people or UK plc because we are wasting talent.

Let me close by quoting the words of Vince Barrett, the immediate past president of the Association for Careers, Education and Guidance who lives in the Humber area. He has spent his whole life in careers education and guidance, working with young people. He said:

“Removing the statutory duty for secondary schools to provide careers education and replacing it with a new duty to provide only careers guidance has resulted in young people having to make decisions about their future without fully understanding the range of opportunities that may be open to them. It’s a bit like being told to choose a pair of shoes without trying them on and hoping they’ll be a perfect fit.”

I hope that this debate today gives the Government an opportunity to step up to the plate for the young people of this country and put in the resource to allow proper, impartial careers education and guidance to be given to every young person in the land, so that they can achieve their potential.