CAREERS guidance should be at the heart of schooling - it plays a vital part in helping young people navigate from education to work, says Jessica Sellick.

Careers guidance should be at the heart of schooling, for it plays a vital part in helping young people navigate from education to work. So what is the Government’s approach to careers guidance and will small rural schools be there to deliver it? Jessica Sellick investigates.

Pre-2009 there was a national careers service that worked with all schools to support careers exploration and decision making. This provision transformed into ‘Connexions’ in 2000 with personal advisors based in schools, colleges and Connexions centres across England. Connexions were paid for by Local Authorities and when Government announced they would not have to fund the service from April 2012 many closed and the name was phased out. In its replacement the Government made provisions under The Education Act 2011 for responsibility for careers advice to be passed to schools and colleges.

In March 2015 the Department for Education published updated Careers Guidance for schools. This Guidance states that ‘high quality, independent careers guidance is also crucial in helping pupils emerge from school more fully rounded and ready for the world of work. Young people want and need to be well-informed when making subject and career decisions’. It places a duty on schools to secure independent careers guidance of all year 8-13 pupils (those aged from 12-13 years up to 17-18 years of age). It describes how schools should help young people ‘consider a broad and ambitious range of careers’.

It also states schools ‘should have a strategy for the careers guidance they provide’ and this should include providing a range of activities that inspire young people (e.g. employer talks, careers fairs, speakers, college and university visits, coaches and mentors). Other principles of good practice referenced in the Guidance include: building strong links with employers, widening access to advice on options available post-16 (e.g. apprenticeships and vocational routes), providing face-to-face guidance, working with Local Authorities to identify vulnerable young people and providing information to students about the financial support they may be able to receive to help them stay in education post-16.

Ofsted has now been tasked with giving careers guidance a higher priority in school inspections. This follows a report by the inspectorate in 2013 which found since schools had become legally responsible for providing access to careers guidance, three quarters of schools visited were not delivering adequate careers advice. While Ofsted found nearly all of the schools visited offered a range of different careers guidance activities the provision was not sufficiently well coordinated or reviewed to ensure that each student received appropriate guidance.

Very few of the schools visited knew how to provide a service effectively or had the skills and expertise needed to provide a comprehensive service. And few schools had purchased an adequate service from external sources.

Earlier this year, the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) commissioned a survey of 14-19 year olds on career options. 84% of the young people that responded believed they were ‘quite likely’ or ‘very likely’ to enter their chosen career. However, almost half (43%) said formal careers advice had not been very influential in them reaching this decision, or that they had received no careers guidance at all. In fact, one-quarter (24%) of young people were taking their next career or education step purely because their parents told them to do. And more than one in six (15%) are just doing the same as their friends.

Some of these findings are also echoed in a survey of the current provision of career education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG) in schools in England undertaken by the Career Development Institute (CDI) and Careers England in March and April 2015. The survey found up to a third of schools have dropped careers guidance from the curriculum, and a larger proportion have no career education in the early years of secondary education. It also suggests that the proportion of schools that include work-related learning in the curriculum is no higher than a half in all years, with the exception of Year 10 where up to two-thirds of schools organise some activities with employers (e.g. work experience days).

The Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) was launched in December 2014 by the Department for Education, with £20 million of public funding. The findings of the CDI and Careers England survey have informed its work programme. Of particular interest to RSN members, the CEC has identified ‘cold spot’ areas across England where young people have least access to enterprise and career skills provision.

The report used indicators such as apprenticeships, STEM subjects and engagement between education providers and employers to identify regions with the least and most support available for young people. The findings reveal young people in northern, coastal and rural regions face some of the worst provision – with the Black Country and Cornwall singled out as having the least support. This compares to Coventry/Warwickshire and Thames Valley Berkshire which have some of the best access to support.

The CEC now has a £5 million Investment Fund provided by the Department for Education. It is this Investment Fund which organisations with a strong track record in helping young people who have previously lacked good quality careers and enterprise support are able to bid into. Successful bidders will be announced in early 2016.

In a rural context, this requirement on schools to provide careers guidance brings opportunities and challenges. Indeed, the latest Guidance from the Department for Education includes one rural reference. The Department recommends schools in rural locations consider ‘engaging with local small and medium sized businesses to provide students with a broad range of experiences given the need for a more entrepreneurial economy’. Where does careers guidance fit in rural schools? I offer three points.

Firstly, schools are expected to develop their own approach to careers advice and find the money out of shrinking budgets to provide it. Many RSN members are worried about the future of rural schools. While running a deficit is permissible if the Governing Body of a school is able to prove it will be able to generate the cash in the future, with smaller numbers of pupils on the roll the amount of financial wiggle room in rural schools is limited.

>In turn Government is putting more responsibilities on schools which disproportionately impacts on the budgets of those in rural areas. For example, the introduction of universal infant free school meals in 2014 has led many schools to install kitchens and/or make arrangements so they are able to serve hot food. While Government funded the meals and some kitchen installations, it did not provide funding for meals to be transported to school sites or for staff to serve hot food or do the washing up.

The way Special Educational Needs is funded is also changing, with schools now expected to find the first £6,000 of the cost of providing personalised support to eligible pupils. In many parts of England, Scotland and Wales, the viability of small schools is being questioned on the ground of financial economies of scale. On the other hand, there are many examples of partnerships or federations of rural schools being set up. On a more positive note, in the Department for Education’s Spending Review 2015 settlement with HM Treasury plans were announced to introduce a ‘national rate’ wherein the amount of money schools and Local Authorities receive will be based on the characteristics of the pupils rather than historic calculations.

Starting from 2017-2018 it is hoped this will address the current situation where schools have been given £3,000 per pupil in some city districts compared to rural counties despite the rural premium that comes from sparsity and distance. For me, all of this opens up a debate about whether schools are here to raise standards and achieve better outcomes for children (regardless of whether they are in a rural or urban area) or grapple with their budgets and cut costs? In rural places the role and importance that schools play in their local community must be championed if they are to survive.

Secondly, we are left with hot and cold spots as a fragmented and dis-jointed system of careers guidance is in place. While umbrella organisations like the National Careers Service has online tools, job profiles and advice on choosing a career, how can this help if individual schools lack dedicated career advisers and a proper system of monitoring careers advice at a local level? From experience I think young people are likely to approach their subject teachers first with any careers questions.

This does not mean that every teacher should become a career guidance specialist, but perhaps teachers could be encouraged to think more widely about academic and vocational progression routes from their subject? This also enables the curriculum to inspire career and place based subject learning.

For example, the Exmoor Curriculum supported by Exmoor National Park Authority and the Exmoor Society, helps children learn about their home environment and become junior rangers.

Similarly, RSN members are aware of many small and medium sized businesses that do go into schools to talk about the workplace and to inspire young people; they often lack the time, scale, resources and investment that larger firms have to provide vacation work experience, mentoring, apprenticeships and training schemes.

Thirdly, the current focus on careers guidance won’t necessarily address the trend affecting many rural communities who lose bright young people who tend not to return until they are older (if at all).<> We need to create live-work opportunities to keep young people in our rural areas. That means providing somewhere for them to work (a well-paid job, help to start a business), live (affordable housing), access services (transport, broadband and mobile phone coverage) and have fun (sports, leisure and entertainment).

There are many examples of employers coming together to attract talented young people into rural communities (e.g. Rock the Cotswolds) but making young people think earlier and more about rural live-work starts in our schools, with careers guidance and job prospects.

For me, careers guidance is not merely about choosing or finding jobs for young people when they leave school, college or university; it’s about helping young people realise their potential and harness their aspirations. With ongoing austerity finding a future career in rural areas is important than ever.

Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration; an economic development business working with communities, Government and business to help them achieve their full potential. She has undertaken a mid-term evaluation of a Wellbeing Service, which aims to reduce hospital admissions and the need for long term residential care by putting in place a community package of support (e.g. equipment, adaptations, TeleCare) and recently completed a European project on ‘social value’. Jessica’s public services work includes research for Defra on alternative service delivery and local level rural proofing. In her spare time Jessica volunteers for a farming charity. She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk or telephone 01522 521211.

Website: http://www.roseregeneration.co.uk/ Twitter: @RoseRegen