Helping students make career choices

Employers can help students with their career choices in many different ways - ways that intersect with many of the other categories in this section. For example:

  • Employees can mentor students and help them to think about their future and their careers. Employees can also use  online mentoring to help students.
  • Employers can host  work experience visits and support the  Young Apprenticeship for students interested in their field of work. Students can then make an informed decision on whether a particular type of work is for them.
  • For employers that cannot host work experience visits, they can host  workplace visits instead.
  • Employers can help to design curriculum materials in the following areas, to help encourage students' interest in a particular subject and line of work:

Employers can work with school/college careers advisers to help them keep up to date with the latest information about the different types of careers.  

Benefits for employers

  • Employers guide students to start thinking about making a very important decision. If students are guided by experienced professionals now, they are more likely to make informed and realistic decisions, and plan their future education accordingly.
  • Students on work experience or company visits may decide to pursue a career in that sector and even apply for a job with the employer in the future.

Benefits for students

  • Students can receive help on a very important and life-changing decision, and receive guidance on making the right choices.

Employers' contribution to CEIAG

Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance

Employers can make an important contribution to careers education (CEIAG) programmes by helping young people ground their career ideas within the realistic context of the needs of employers today and of the opportunities that are actually available. There are many ideas of how employers can work with schools in the section on 'Types of Enagagement' but support for young people's CEIAG must be underpinned by impartiality.

Impartiality

The most recent guidance on what careers education should include is called the Framework for Impartial Careers Education 7 - 19 and was produced by the then Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2010. Impartiality is defined as being in the interests of the young person, rather than in the interests of any one institution or organisation. Of course, employers may see a benefit of working with young people in school in order to help them to recruit the 'right' people. It would be much better for retention, however, if they are fully informed of all aspects of working in a particular sector, rather than just focussing on the most positive aspects.

This framework is underpinned by six principles, which are that careers education should:

1.      empower young people to plan and manage their own futures

2.      enable them to progress successfully

3.      provide comprehensive information on all learning routes and opportunities

4.      respond to the needs of each learner

5.      raise aspirations

6.      actively promote equality of opportunity and challenges stereotypes

Working closely with teachers in schools will help employers to focus their work so that they can best support these principles.

All-Age Careers Service

Currently, expert careers guidance is provided by Connexions which includes a universal careers guidance service along with more generic support for personal issues for vulnerable young people but the government intends to separate these two functions with the introduction of an All-Age Careers Service which will restore the focus on specialist careers guidance for young people, and support them more effectively during their transition to adulthood.

The service will include online, telephone and face to face support. The website and phone helpline will be up and running by September 2011 with the full service available from April 2012.

Education Bill (2011)

The Education Bill (January 2011) heralds a number of changes to schools' responsibilities for CEIAG and will be applied from September 2012. The main changes are outlined below:

  • There will be a new duty on schools to secure independent careers guidance for all pupils in Years 9 to 11.
  • Independent means provided by someone who is 'not employed by the school'.
  • It must be delivered impartially and include information on all options in 16 to 18 education or training, including apprenticeships.
  • The duty applies to all maintained schools, including special schools and PRUs. Once it becomes an Act, it will be applied to academies through their Funding Agreements.
  • Schools can obtain this guidance from the all age service, from other private providers or individuals.
  • This duty replaces the current duty on schools to provide careers education for Year 7 to 11 pupils which will be repealed.
  • The Secretary of State still expects careers education to be delivered in English schools.

Careers education is part of the wider curriculum designed to prepare all pupils for adult and learning life, but is not part of the National Curriculum. For this reason it will not be part of the review of the National Curriculum which began in January 2011 and will be conclude in 2013, with full implementation of the outcomes by September 2014.

There will be an internal review of PSHE education, which may include careers education. This will not affect the current statutory status of PSHE education but expects to highlight how schools can improve the quality and flexibility of delivery of PSHE education.
It is not clear what will happen to the current statutory requirement for schools to deliver five days of work-related learning in Key Stage 4, but Professor Alison Wolf in her review of vocational education (March 2011) recommends that this should be removed.

Other changes in the Bill relevant to CEIAG include:

·         removal of the requirement of schools to provide careers advisers with access to pupils and with information on them for the purpose of giving guidance;

·         removal of the separate duty on schools, but not colleges, to provide careers information. It is expected that this will be part of their new duty to secure independent careers guidance;

·         the collection and publication of data on post 16 destinations and achievements. This will be done by matching data from the Client Caseload Information System and the National Pupil Database.

Useful sources of information:

To keep up with the progress of the Bill visit: www.education.gov.uk/educationbill

The Wolf report on vocational education can be found at: www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/The%Wolf%20Report.pdf 

General updates on all issues relating to CEIAG, regular briefings and newsletters can be found at: www.cegnet.co.uk

Please note: the text above was written in March 2011 and will be updated 'as and when' policy changes are implemented.  

National Careers Service for England update (from BIS in April 2011): http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/john-hayes-national-careers-service-for-england