Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many full-time equivalent careers advisers are employed to answer phone calls to the National Careers Service.

The National Careers Service provides free, up to date impartial information, advice and guidance on careers, skills and the labour market in England. The service is delivered by 765 careers advisers working in the community and supporting telephone and webchat channels. The service is available to young people and adults through the website and telephone helpline. Adults can also access face-to-face guidance through the local community-based service.

There are 121 full time equivalent professionally qualified careers advisers who are dedicated to work on the National Careers Service locally delivered telephone channel. These advisers primarily provide the service via telephone, but may also work in the community and support live webchat. The average length of telephone calls is shown below, split between Information and Advice calls (IA) and Information, Advice and Guidance calls (IAG):

• April 2023: IA Only Average Duration 00:09:33 and Full IAG Average Duration 00:38:53
• May 2023: IA Only Average Duration 00:08:57 and Full IAG Average Duration 00:44:25

Sources:

• Numbers of full-time equivalent careers advisers are taken from the internal workforce development survey which was carried out in March 2023.
• Timings of calls are taken from internal reports submitted from our prime contractors. They use the reporting database held by Inform Communications, the provider hosting the telephone channel, to extract this information.