Careers Education for Students

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Aberdare]

That this House takes note of the case for high-quality careers education and advice to be available to all students.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, for some years careers education has been the poor relation of education provision. The Digital Skills Committee, on which I served, described it as “patchy”; later, the Social Mobility Committee found that it was “failing young people greatly”. A study quoted in the Government’s new careers strategy found that fewer than two-thirds of year 11 students said they had received any careers education, and only half of those were satisfied. A 2013 Ofsted report found that too few schools are providing careers guidance that meets the needs of all their students.

Yet good careers education and guidance are crucial: first, for individuals to help them widen their aspirations, fulfil their potential and achieve rewarding and satisfying lives; secondly, for the economy, to ensure that we have the right skills and talents to meet our national needs for innovation, productivity, growth and competitiveness in a fast-changing world of work; and, thirdly, for social mobility, so that no one, whatever their background or circumstances, is held back by lack of awareness of opportunities available and how to pursue them.

For some years before joining this House, I ran a small business providing employability training and support to young Londoners, mostly NEET—not in education, employment or training. I saw for myself the challenges of giving them meaningful guidance for their future life and work directions and the skills and attitudes necessary to pursue them. I claim no specialist expertise beyond that, but I am pleased to have obtained this debate and much look forward to the contributions of speakers with much greater knowledge and experience and to the response of the Minister.

I am of course delighted that my noble friend Lady Bull has chosen to make her maiden speech in the debate, and I am sure that she will bring a valuable perspective to it. I am also grateful to the many organisations and individuals working in the field in many capacities who have provided me with input, not least Claudia Harris and her colleagues at the Careers & Enterprise Company—the CEC.

I hope that today’s debate will serve to highlight the current state of careers education and some of the challenges needing to be addressed to achieve the Government’s aim of making it world-class. My own focus will be mainly on careers education in schools in England.

Today’s young people will find themselves in a highly complex world when they leave education. Work patterns are shifting, digital technology and automation affect nearly every occupation, skills need regular updating and lifetime jobs are a thing of the past. To succeed, they need a clear and realistic understanding of the opportunities available and of how to develop the skills and qualities they need to grasp them and progress. That is what careers education is about, and why I believe it to be a key aspect of government policy—up there with related policies on skills, technical education, apprenticeships and industrial strategy, all of which are dependent for their success on a solid foundation of careers education.

In 2011, responsibility for careers education was transferred from local authorities to schools and colleges, but without any associated extra funding. Unsurprisingly, the initial result was a significant decline in the overall standard of provision, as schools sought to tackle this new role within existing budgets. Teachers are not the right people to deliver careers education; most have neither the skills nor experience needed. That is why schools need access to independent, impartial careers guidance from trained and qualified professionals.

There are now clear signs of a new optimism and energy in the careers education field, not least thanks to the groundwork laid by the CEC since its establishment in 2014, and leading up to the Government’s long-awaited careers strategy, announced last December. The strategy has been widely welcomed, and an Ofsted report earlier this year found that,

“careers guidance within schools is improving”,

and that:

“The publication of the careers strategy has given schools and colleges a solid framework to build their careers offer around”.


In January, the Government issued statutory guidance for all maintained schools and academies on how they should deliver careers education. All schools should have a formal careers programme, published on their website and headed by a named careers leader. It should be based on the eight Gatsby benchmarks set out in Sir John Holman’s 2014 report for the Gatsby Foundation, which have won almost universal acceptance as a template for high-quality careers education. They are: a stable careers programme; learning from career and labour market information; addressing the needs of each student; linking curriculum learning to careers, so that careers education is embedded throughout the curriculum, especially in STEM subjects; encounters with employers and employees; experiences of workplaces; encounters with further and higher education; and personal guidance.

Schools should measure their progress against these benchmarks using the Compass online assessment tool, developed by CEC. Almost 3,000 of the 3,800 schools in England are already using Compass, and the number achieving some or all of the eight benchmarks is rising markedly. The Government’s laudable, if optimistic, expectation is that every school should meet all eight benchmarks by the end of 2020. Schools are strongly encouraged to work towards an updated quality in careers standard, administered by the Quality in Careers Consortium.

CEC is also funded to provide up to 500 bursaries to help schools identify and train their careers leaders. Demand looks likely to comfortably exceed this figure, an encouraging sign that schools are engaging with the strategy, but which also raises the issue of how this demand can be met.

The strategy also covers the creation and support of 20 careers hubs around England, modelled on a two-year pilot with 16 schools and colleges in the north-east. After two years, 88% of them were achieving at least six of the benchmarks, with three schools achieving all eight; none was achieving more than three at the start. The new hubs will focus their activities on groups of young people and areas most in need of targeted support, to help deliver improvements in social mobility.

A major, and very welcome, theme of the strategy is the need for careers education to introduce young people to a range of different work opportunities and environments through encounters with employers and workplace experiences—the sort of thing I was doing in my former life. The guidance states that every pupil should have at least one meaningful employer encounter each year for seven years, from years 7 to 13, and at least one workplace experience by the age of 16, with another by 18. At least one encounter should be with a STEM employer. My noble friend Lady Bull may share my regret that there is no similar focus on the arts and creative sector, which is so valuable to the UK economy.

I would also like to see a stronger focus on using these encounters to promote apprenticeships, especially since reading that a recent report by the Junior Engineering Engagement Programme found that 68% of the young people that it interviewed do not know what an apprenticeship is—although, in another poll, two-thirds said they would be very or fairly interested in an apprenticeship. I regret the lack of any reference to SMEs in this part of the guidance, but there is at least one reference to entrepreneurial skills, which are also important.

Schools have often found it hard to engage with employers, particularly in areas with a limited number of suitable or willing businesses. Although the Careers & Enterprise Company’s role has since been broadened, it was originally created with a focus on improving links between schools and employers. Working with all 38 local enterprise partnerships, it is setting up a nationwide network of volunteer enterprise advisers, with a target of having one in every school by the end of 2020—over 2,000 are already in place. They come from a wide range of business backgrounds, large and small. It is too early to assess the results being achieved or the overall quality of people taking on this role, though they are already having some effect in increasing the number of employers that schools are working with and the number of encounters provided to students.

There are some exciting independent initiatives seeking to tackle the challenge of providing more employer encounters, often making innovative use of digital technology. Founders4Schools, for example, offers a work experience programme, Workfinder, which links teachers, students and employers in a way that enables students to organise their own work placements online, with guidance from their teachers. Many of the employers involved are innovative, successful and fast-growing SMEs, and the programme aims for wide national coverage. MiddletonMurray, an independent training and apprenticeship provider, has launched its own careers advice campaign, “Limitless”, with a series of podcasts entitled “iwant2ba”, in which Angela Middleton, its founder and CEO, interviews mostly young high-flyers in a range of different fields about how they got to where they are, in a format designed to appeal to young, technologically savvy people. They serve as valuable and much-needed role models—more of these are needed.

Online access to, and automation of, career education resources will surely become increasingly essential. Perhaps the National Careers Service website should include signposting to resources such as those I have mentioned. The NCS was set up in 2012, focusing mainly on providing tailored careers support for adults nationwide, including bespoke services for people with special needs, but it also provides career-related information for everyone, including young people, via a central website, which is due to be upgraded shortly as an engaging one-stop shop for all government careers information. This should be a valuable resource, although “engaging” is not a word I would often associate with GOV.UK websites—something rather jazzier may be needed to appeal to the young target audience.

I will end with three challenges I see facing successful delivery of the careers strategy, on which the Minister may like to comment. The first is funding, concerns about which are common to almost all the briefings I have received. The funding announced for training 500 career leaders and to support 20 careers hubs is welcome, but what support will be available to other schools, four-fifths of which are not covered by the career hubs, and when? What incentives might be offered to encourage schools to devote more effort to careers education? Could they perhaps be offered some funding contingent on their making a commitment to working towards and achieving the quality in careers standard? There is also likely to be a growing shortage of enough skilled careers professionals to meet the important eighth benchmark recommendation that every pupil should have at least one personal guidance interview with a qualified careers adviser by the age of 16, with the opportunity for another by age 18. How might training for these new careers professionals be funded?

The second challenge relates to delivery: how will the progress of the careers strategy be tracked? What indicators will be used to measure performance? What will happen if schools are not achieving their targets, or if too few employer encounters or work experience places are available, or if disadvantaged local areas are failing to keep pace? Careers-related provision is covered in Ofsted inspections but perhaps needs greater emphasis. The CEC is providing tools like Compass, and is looking at ways of assessing benefits for individual recipients of careers education. The main outcome indicators currently used are the impact of careers education on the number of people who are NEET, and data on the destinations of pupils when they leave school. These should be beefed up, with much better destination data, tracking not just what students do immediately after leaving school or college but how their careers develop over time, how much they earn, and how they feel about their lives and careers. I hope that the Minister will say something about how the overall performance of careers education will be monitored and assessed.

My final challenge relates to communication. Despite the good work of the CEC, the NCS and others, awareness of what careers education is about, why it matters, what it can offer, and how it relates to opportunities such as apprenticeships and T-levels is still very limited. An ongoing process of effective communication is needed, using the most appropriate channels, including online media and other technologies, and with strong case studies and role models, to reach those affected: parents—not least—teachers, school governors, large and especially small employers, young people, and everyone in employment who may find themselves facing or wanting a change of direction. This should be a positive, good news story, and we could do with more of those.

As I have discovered in preparing for this debate, careers education encompasses a wide range of issues. I am conscious that there are many I have not touched on, and I hope that other noble Lords may do so. But I am optimistic that a strong infrastructure is taking shape, with a clear and ambitious strategy in place to set the future direction. There is still a long way to go, but I trust that the Government will now maintain the necessary commitment and resourcing to deliver their world-class aspiration, with all the benefits it offers for individuals, the economy and society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, which I have found highly instructive and enlightening. I join the chorus of congratulations for the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who more than lived up to her star billing, and I look forward to many encores. I also thank the Minister for a typically thoughtful and comprehensive response to the debate. I was particularly delighted with the emphasis placed by several noble Lords on the importance of the arts and creative sectors—which is not to downplay the importance of STEM but to make sure that we do not forget that the arts and creative sectors are important, if not equally important.

I will not try to summarise the debate—I will be cut off in my prime if I do—but I ended up more encouraged than not. I am not quite sure whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, but I sense that it is beginning to fill up rather than empty out. I am amazed by and in awe of the stamina of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who has put her name down to speak in three of this afternoon’s debates and has evidently done all sorts of research into maiden speeches before this one.

I end by saying, as someone apparently did say in a maiden speech a long time ago, that what matters most now is that we move from promises—very encouraging promises from the Government in their careers strategy—to delivery. We need to focus now on delivering against the targets that the Government have set, while recognising the very important and valuable points that so many Lords have made. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.