Good careers guidance motivates students and drives progress. How are schools making it happen effectively? Sylvia King, Head of Post 16 and Vocational Networks SSAT, offers a number of useful pointers.
The Ofsted report, Going in the right direction? examined the state of careers education since it become a legal responsibility for schools to secure independent and impartial careers guidance for all their students in years 9-11.
It included reports on schools’ own experiences. While the report was critical of some provision it highlighted some good practice – and admitted that schools cannot do this effectively on their own, or even with the level of support they commonly receive now.
Schools that placed a ‘high strategic priority’ on careers guidance and gave staff the time and resources to undertake the activity supported their students successfully.
However, the report acknowledged that this took both time and money to achieve, and required both staff training and ‘buying in’ external expertise when required. (Although Ofsted found that the quality of the provision by external advisors was variable and did not always meet the needs of the students.)
The quality of provision by external advisors did not always meet students’ needs
All schools are feeling the effect of increased costs, and paying for external services has become increasingly difficult. Yet individual students often benefited most when schools provided CPD and support for internal careers advice.
Ofsted found that good practice was not necessarily focused solely on individual careers interviews. Activities that developed the skills students needed to find and explore the information available were highly successful.
For example: lessons that motivated students to gain a sound understanding of the mismatch between the popularity and availability of certain jobs; lessons that supported the students in accessing high quality career-related websites; and clear links within subject areas to related career pathways.
Successful lessons motivated students to gain a sound understanding of the mismatch between the popularity and availability of certain jobs
The best careers interviews were conducted by staff who:
- had an understanding of the students’ starting point and their academic performance
- were able to build the students’ confidence
- had extensive knowledge of local provision and access to relevant, up-to-date labour market information.
The emphasis on high-quality support for internal staff as a key determinant of effective careers guidance reflected Ofsted’s finding that external providers did not always provide high quality support.
Work experience and links with employers also helped greatly. Again, restricted funding has made it hard to provide universal entitlement to work experience and indeed the Wolf report was critical of its impact at KS4.
However, this report found that work experience gave students very good opportunities to consider their future careers and the types of work environments that they might encounter.
Schools often found that work experience relationships could be developed positively to enhance the programmes that they ran in house.
Work experience gave students very good opportunities to consider their future careers and the types of work environments that they might encounter
While the report was critical of some of the practice it had observed, most of its recommendations focused on improving the services offered by the bodies charged with helping schools provide independent and impartial careers guidance.
For instance it recommended that the National Careers Service (responsible for supporting young people aged 13 and over) should:
- actively market its services to schools
- update information regularly
- ensure information is relevant on both a local and national level
- keep schools well informed about HE and FE provision as well as vocational training and apprenticeships.
Schools complained that the website and telephone services currently available were targeted at an adult market and did little to support them appropriately.
One thing that was agreed by both Ofsted and the schools was that students who had received good careers guidance made good decisions about their future studies and careers.
This in turn motivated them to work hard and achieve the goals that they had set themselves. This positive impact was evidenced across the student body, ranging from high achievers to vulnerable students identified as potential NEETs.
There was a strong correlation between high quality careers guidance and academic and vocational course success and progression.
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