Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that all schools are aware of their responsibility under the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 to allow access into schools to education and training providers in order to talk to pupils in Years 8 to 13 about approved technical qualifications and apprenticeships; and when they expect Ofsted to start measuring schools' performance against that requirement.

Section 2 of The Technical and Further Education Act 2017, attached, will come into force on 2 January 2018. This will require all maintained schools and academies to ensure that there is an opportunity for a range of education and training providers to access pupils in year 8 to year 13 for the purpose of informing them of approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships. Schools must prepare and publish a policy statement setting out the circumstances in which education and training providers will be given access to pupils, and to ensure that this is followed.

The department has been communicating with schools during the autumn term to explain how to comply with the new law and allow them sufficient time to prepare for its commencement. The department has published information on its website and communicated directly with school governors, head teachers and careers leaders through a range of channels. We will shortly be writing to all schools in England to inform them of the new careers strategy, published on 4 December, and we will take this opportunity to remind them of their new legal requirement.

The department has worked with schools and representatives from colleges, apprenticeship providers and university technical colleges to develop new statutory guidance for schools on access to education and training providers. We intend to publish this on 2 January 2018 to coincide with the new duty coming into force.

Ofsted will take account of this statutory guidance when developing its approach to assessing careers provision. Matters relating to careers provision contribute to judgements under three of the four areas evaluated as part of school inspections. Where, during the course of a school inspection, it becomes clear that statutory requirements are not being met, and this is a contributory factor in explaining why pupils are not achieving as expected, it will be considered for inclusion in the inspection report as a key point for improvement.