The Education Select Committee looked at the issue of careers guidance and produced a report that questioned the impartiality of schools now tasked with providing the service. Graham Hoyle OBE puts forward his suggestions to remedy the problem.

Lord Baker of the Baker-Dearing Trust has proposed that at age 14, pupils should make a choice to go down one of four educational pathways for the next four years of their lives.

Even if his ideas are too radical for a government to follow, the fact is that the educational landscape is already increasingly complex at 14 with the arrival of Lord Baker’s own UTCs, free schools and studio schools.

It is not surprising therefore that the Education Select Committee argues that schoolchildren should start receiving advice on their options, including careers guidance, earlier than in Year 11, the GCSE exams year.

The committee has produced a powerful report with its conclusions strengthened by the views of young people themselves who took part in the inquiry.

These views have rather disappointingly been relegated to the report’s annexes and I would urge anyone to read these first before they start to read the main text.

The young people’s comments echo what our members hear from their apprentices and trainees on the frontline every day.

The young people talk about the value of work-related learning which the coalition government has decided is no longer a statutory obligation for schools and we are in strong agreement with the committee that the obligation should be restored through the statutory guidance.

The report rightly highlights the dangers of the lack of access to impartial advice for pupils, particularly with regard to guidance about apprenticeships and other vocational options.

The MPs are especially concerned about schools with sixth forms, which have a vested interest in encouraging as many as possible of their students to stay on to do A-levels when some of those students would benefit much more from pursuing alternative options.

The Raising the Participation Age initiative, accompanied by the proposed new traineeships, will offer a range of choices at 16 that should hopefully reduce the number of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEETs) and cut the number of course drop-outs where the UK has traditionally fared badly, particularly in respect of 17-year-olds.

But it will only be effective if young people are receiving sound advice on their choices and as the committee MPs say, this should include impartial and face-to-face guidance.

One teacher from every secondary school should become the apprenticeship champion for their school”

We propsed to DfE several years ago that its training provider members should be allowed to go into schools on teacher training Inset days and give a presentation to teachers on apprenticeships.

The presentation would cover a generic description of the apprenticeship system and benefits and be delivered where possible by a combination of apprentices who have previously attended that school, their current employers and the organising training provider.

It would also signpost the school, and its pupils, to the full range of apprenticeship opportunities in the area.

We also believe that at least one teacher from every secondary school should undertake work experience with an apprenticeship provider and become the apprenticeship champion for their school.

As early advocates of the strengthening of Ofsted’s role in checking on the quality of the advice being offered in schools, we are greatly concerned by the committee’s identification of a disconnect between Ofsted’s understanding of its new responsibilities and the minister’s view on what inspectors should be doing.

The recommendation that schools should be required to publish an annual careers plan which shows evidence of impartial advice being made available would appear to be a good way of starting to tackle the issue.

We support a widening of the National Careers Service’s remit to cover young people as well as adults, which would put it on the same footing as services in Scotland and Wales.

We also back the committee’s recommendation that the National Apprenticeship Service should be given access to all schools without waiting to be invited.

Graham Hoyle OBE, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers

Traineeships were put firmly on the FE agenda by sector minister Matthew Hancock this month when he revealed plans for a new pre-apprenticeship scheme. Chris Jones takes up the issue and explains what he thinks needs to be considered when the final traineeship model is drawn up.

Further education Minister Matthew Hancock’s recent announcement about the consultation paper on traineeships has been broadly welcomed by the industry, including us at City & Guilds.

As Mr Hancock points out, this discussion presents an opportunity for the government to learn from the success of existing traineeships and to put into practice the advice of training providers and employers alike.

City & Guilds already has a large portfolio of qualifications that prepares young people for the world of work. These have demonstrated there is a clear demand for young people to have access to some form of consistent pre-training for employment or apprenticeships.

Obviously, we are waiting for more information and looking forward to working with government to develop traineeships, and so much is still to be decided.

However, from our experience, we believe traineeships should consider the following points.

Firstly, young people need practical maths and English and employability skills.

One of the most important components of the proposed traineeship model is its focus on English, maths and employability skills. We regularly hear from employers that the combination of functional literacy and numeracy and generic employability skills is too often lacking in the candidates they see.

Young people are faced with continually shifting challenges within the labour market. They are required to demonstrate ever more flexible skill-sets and competencies.

With this in mind, it’s essential that training in employability and basic literacy and numeracy keeps up with these changes. This would support young people to enter the workplace with both the confidence and the core attributes that employers need.

Secondly, employers need to be involved and engaged in traineeships. One of the strengths of the pre-apprenticeship offering we have been developing has been our engagement with employers and recognition of the critical role they play in making the programmes a success.

Their involvement helps to ensure that people develop the necessary skills before starting an apprenticeship.

We also know, through our recent Ways into Work report, that young people are eager to learn more about the world of work at a young age, 88 per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds said that a visit to an employer would be extremely useful to them, and yet just 26 per cent had been given this opportunity.

The traineeship proposals also include work experience as a crucial part of the programme. We believe that nationally-recognised work experience is a fundamental transition for young people into the world of work, providing young people with tangible experience to include on their CVs. It is great to see it being given the attention it deserves.

And finally, traineeships must be accredited and transferrable. To help trainees progress through education and into employment, traineeships need to include a nationally-recognised qualification and standardised course elements — for example, job-related skills at levels one and two.

This would not only give the trainees a real sense of what it may be like to participate in an apprenticeship or other work-based programme, it would also ensure they develop the skills employers need and that these skills are transferable within the same sector. Ultimately, this would place trainees in a better position as they embark on their careers.

Alongside this, traineeships need to be flexible and adaptable in order to suit the needs of individual employers and trainees. However, as with all the programmes we deliver, we believe that the focus must also be on quality, structure and a tangible end result.

The traineeship scheme must be seen as a quality investment, and that’s why we will be working with the government to explore ways to develop an approval rating for colleges and training providers delivering them. The government’s commitment to establishing high quality traineeships and work placements is certainly a very encouraging step that could benefit young people and employers alike.

Chris Jones, chief executive and director
general at City & Guilds

Lord Baker’s new book, 14-18: A New Vision for Education, sets out radical changes to the education system and includes contributions from several sector stakeholders. Maggie Galliers delivers her verdict on the book and evaluates the view laid out by Lord Baker.

The central idea in Lord Baker’s new book is that the English education system should be re-shaped around transfer ages of nine and 14.

Lord Baker has written three of the book’s chapters and has carefully chosen seven men as co-contributors.

Different authors have different viewpoints, but the common themes are that the current education system is excessively focused on academic achievement, that a strong technical alternative needs to be developed and that we can be confident in trusting 14-year-olds and their parents to make positive choices about their future.

Lord Baker goes further than his co-contributors in putting forward the wholesale re-organisation of the English school system, but he does not examine fully the practicalities or costs of this proposal so it is more a vision than a manifesto.

His proposition is a bold one given that the age ranges of 23,000 primary schools, 3,000 secondary schools and 300 colleges would have to change and the education estate would need to be transformed to accommodate three-tier education.

Lord Baker proposes four “pathways” at age 14, each taught in “self contained” institutions. While there is certainly merit in pathways post-14 which recognise, in the words of Lord Baker that “skills and knowledge are not mutually exclusive…they are mutually complementary”, there is a danger that, as with earlier reforms, this emphasis on structures could become a distraction from more important questions about what young people should learn, how they should be assessed and how they should be supported with their transition into adult life.

Although Lord Baker argues that pupils would choose between different education routes, the reality could be that the new 14-18 colleges would be making the choices and that local hierarchies between the technical, academic, sports and career colleges would begin to develop.

I came away from this book feeling that an opportunity had been missed. It’s interesting to hear new perspectives from a Harvard professor, a middle school head and a private school headmaster about 11 to 19 education, but I wondered why the book lacked other perspectives.

Several authors referred to Professor Alison Wolf’s reforms suggesting that they did not go far enough. It would have been good to have had a response from her. It would also have been more balanced to have had a stronger college perspective on the issues raised.

FE colleges have been the midwives of the university technical college movement, they educate more 16 to 18-year-olds than the school sector, and they were recently given power to enrol students directly at the age of 14.

Changes are needed, but my experience of reform is that it is best to carry people with you rather than impose reform.

The college staff I know are realistic about the need to raise standards and to adapt to the changing economy, but they are also frustrated at the constant policy and structural changes introduced by successive governments.

We have seen initiatives, programmes and qualifications come and go and while it is refreshing to see such a high profile push for a higher status technical route, the requirement for such wide ranging reorganisation based on an age break at 14 needs to be evaluated carefully.

This is why the Department for Education’s recent announcement about direct recruitment at 14 is so helpful. It allows a few colleges to build on what they have already done locally, but to do so in the knowledge that they will be properly funded for their work.

Kenneth Baker’s book is a useful addition to the argument, but it is not the final word.

Maggie Galliers, Association of Colleges president

The Education Select Committee’s review of careers guidance came to worrying conclusions about the quality of service being offered to young people, but, as committee adviser Dr Tristram Hooley points out, it’s not just schoolchildren who need good advice.

Since the election major changes have been made to the careers education and guidance. These were not mentioned in the manifestos of the governing parties nor have they received much press coverage.

However, these changes have big implications for all learners and for young people in particular.

The Connexions service has been closed, the responsibility for career guidance relocated to schools, and the statutory requirements for careers education and work-related learning removed.

The Education Select Committee report highlighted many of these of changes and led to a flurry of press coverage.

One of the problems with the current debate about careers education and guidance is that it tends to focus on schools, as if people only make career choices in school.

This is not to say that careers shouldn’t be an important part of the school system, but rather to note that no matter how well schools address careers, they will never be able to do it all.

Career is a lifelong issue and therefore should be of concern for everyone interested in lifelong learning.

A key problem is the disconnect that exists between schools policy (overseen by DfE) and policy for adults (overseen by BIS).

Those who are under 19, but not in the school system are often forgotten, despite the fact that many of them would benefit from more career support.

Meanwhile BIS is trying to serve adults through the National Careers Service (NCS) while forgetting that adult learners who are in the FE and skills sector are also developing their careers.

There is a real need for those in FE to work closely with the NCS and to embrace both careers education and guidance as an integral part of the programmes that they offer.

Young people need opportunities to learn about alternatives to school”

Careers work speaks to the individual. It encourages people to take control of their lives and to be purposeful in driving their direction and development. At the heart of this is a strong commitment to lifelong learning.

The FE and skills sector should support careers education and guidance within the school system, as delivered by the NCS and within their own institutions for three reasons.

Firstly, young people need opportunities to learn about alternatives to school and advice to help them decide when to take these alternatives. Without careers support there is a danger that schools monopolise the pre-19 system and squeeze alternative provision out.

Secondly, supporting learners to think about careers whilst they are learning can help to retain them within the education system and enhance their performance.

Learners are willing to do the difficult bits of courses if they believe that this will take them closer to their goals.

Careers education and guidance helps learners to clarify their goals and understand what they require to achieve them.

Finally, careers provision can help learners to maximise the impact of their learning. If they are able to reflect on what they are good at and to identify the best place that their skills could be used they are more likely to make successful transitions and to value and utilise what they have learned.

Careers work aids this reflection and supports transitions to work and further learning.

In the long run, these issues need to be picked up and supported by policy. A future policy needs to move beyond a compartmentalised approach and recognise that people develop their careers across their learning, work and lives.

Further education should be at the heart of this both offering alternatives to school and opportunities for those who wish to return to learning and develop their careers.

The aspiration should therefore be to develop a lifelong career development system that serves both individual aspirations and the effective functioning of the education system and the labour market.

Dr Tristram Hooley, reader in career development at the University of Derby and head of the International Centre for Guidance Studies