Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

That is exactly the kind of enterprising initiative that we want all schools to undertake. It did, of course, take a particularly enterprising Member of Parliament to persuade them to do so, and I know that other schools will want to follow his lead.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

12. What plans she has to reform careers advice.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

One of my priorities is to ensure that young people leave school prepared for the world of work and able to take advantage of the opportunities available to them. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills and Equalities has just said, we want to see improvements to the quality of careers advice available to young people, with many more schools and employers working together to provide excellent support. We have already made a number of changes in this area, including issuing revised statutory guidance to schools.

[Mr Blunkett]

But the Minister of State was reminded earlier this afternoon that the CBI had described careers advice and education as being on life support. That is generous in that it presumes that any support at all is being given to careers advice. Given that the National Careers Council, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and, most recently, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission have expressed genuine concern about what is happening, will the Secretary of State put in place a monitoring process and, at the very least, instruct Ofsted to give no school a mark greater than “requires improvement” if its careers education and advice is not up to scratch?

[Nicky Morgan]

As the right hon. Gentleman said at the end of his question, we already have a monitoring process, which is that Ofsted has a duty to look at the independent careers advice available to schools. I would not want to say that everything is all sorted out and that there are not patches across the country, but I would just point out that a recent survey carried out by CASCAiD, a careers advice company in my constituency, said that, I think, about 86% school students said they had already had access to some form of careers advice. He is right, however, to say that there is more we can do.