Careers in Crisis?
By YEUK Youth Ambassador Jack,
With only a matter of time approaching before another General Election, careers advice in secondary schools have fallen into a similar trend to that of youth unemployment and welfare provision – all have been let loose from a government to find effective solutions which may be tackled nationally. The way in which students can find professional advice in their pathways looks set to be another matter which is unlikely to find any satisfactory solution before the electorate cast their votes. Now Education Secretary Nicky Morgan came under strong pressure from the Commons Education Committee, with the repercussions of her predecessor, Michael Gove’s decision back in 2011 for careers guidance to be handled by individual schools alone rather than local authorities. During that time Ofsted have concluded a near disaster of over 75% of schools, with 60 visited, are failing in their duty. Careers advice was failing to be explicit and the government’s £106 million cross-department funded National Careers Service (NCS), launched in 2012, is insufficiently promoted. It was also revealed by MPs sitting on the committee that with 83% of schools failing to recruit a trained careers advisor, they have now turned to receptionists and teaching assistants instead.
In December last year, the Education Secretary announced that a new company, yet without a title, will be operating in spring under a £5 million grant from the Department for Education to ‘support innovation and stimulate good practice’. Nicky Morgan has argued this proposal to unite employers with schools and colleges and perhaps undo some of the damage she was confronted with by the Committee’s questions. A report published back in 2013 though, ‘An Aspiration Nation’, from the National Careers Council highlights that the already established National Careers Service should take a practical step in enabling such services themselves, in a list of practical steps listed in the report. In a progress report from the government which fed back on the list of recommendations, it highlighted ‘a decision is needed on whether provision should be offered under the National Careers Service brand.’ With the creation of a service seemingly already offered by the NCS, but now just under a new name, it will hardly be surprising if this will not lead to more confusion and frustration from schools as to the purpose of such similar bodies.
What will perhaps lead to further battles about quality of provision will be the soft and ineffectual ‘encouragement’ stance of asking schools to shape their careers service. In 2013, the head of the International Centre for Guidance Studies recommended that ‘government should tighten up the statutory rules to ensure schools are offering adequate careers education and work-related learning.’ As revealed when under question at the Committee session, the Education Secretary has rejected any kind of ‘mandate’ in which government will penalise those schools who are failing their students most.
In November last year, I ran a Twitter conversation with the enterprise Mock Recruit, asking where careers advice had all gone wrong, if they agreed with the statement. In a 30-minute discussion, under the hash-tag #CareersChat, young people came in force to express the challenges from their own experiences and offering solutions as to how they would find improvements. With many themes under discussion, it was clear, as in reports published already, young people want to hear from those who work or have worked in the roles they are interested in and have a ‘can do’ approach into supporting them to take action afterwards. Sadly, only those with authority can enact on their ideas. It is with great worry though if no immediate change of course is in sight, it may be feasible that careers advice as a basic service itself could well be extinct in another five years.
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- Read YEUK’s report on Careers Education
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