Good careers guidance should not start when pupils finish their GCSEs. That’s too late. The vast majority of schools provide some form of careers education, but it doesn’t always follow that this is of a level of quality that can have a tangible impact on the young people in need of guidance. In fact, according to recent Ofsted inspections, it’s quite patchy.
The volume of career options available nowadays is extraordinary. From the classics of Accounting and Medicine to the modern day influencers and professional gamers. Letting students know about them early on, is really important. A report from the charity Education and Employers made the point that aspirations, quite simply, come from exposure to the job. This is best summarised by the American activist for children’s rights, Marian Wright Edelman, who said ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’
The report also highlights a ‘disconnect between aspiration and opportunity’. Many young people want to work in sectors that are widely different from the jobs available. With the right guidance, more structured aspirations can be built with young people to help them move beyond dreaming, to plotting a path to where they want to be, and then a way of executing that plan.
There’s a difficult balance to be struck between meeting the future needs of the labour market, and matching that to the qualifications that young people find attractive but are not easily going to lead them into a career. By making sure they have access to great careers information, advice and guidance early on, so that they can make the right choices, a blend of private and public sector expertise are surely part of the solution.
As it stands, not all schools are fulfilling their duties under the ‘Baker Clause’, in which by law they have to make sure that ‘a range of education and training providers’ have access to pupils from Year 8 to Year 13. In short - many young people are not getting the chance to learn about qualifications and career options that could be the right fit for them.
We want to work with schools to fill this gap, and upgrade the opportunities available to the next generation.
If you work in Secondary education, please get in touch with us to discuss our Youth & Student programmes.
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