CEIAG & Careers Leaders
Resignations, New Beginnings and Traineeships - Are We Nearly There Yet?
Thursday 9th May 2013
The last few years for Careers Professionals has been hard, so I'm not sure if we can say it came as a shock a couple of weeks ago, to hear of the resignations of Heather Jackson and Tony Watts from the NCC. Nosing around the blogs and notice boards it seems there's a widespread belief that they were left in situations that they could no longer morally condone and felt that they had to resign or compromise their own ethical code. This is backed up by their statement starting
"With great regret we have resigned from the National Careers Council. We disagree fundamentally with some of therecommendations presented by the Council to the Minister for Skills (Matthew Hancock) on Wednesday 1 May. We also have strong concerns about the process through which these recommendations were arrived at."
So with the various professional associations now being defunct and the CDI being at its earliest stages, just where does that leave the 'Careers Professions' at the moment? Well, pole axed would be my response. Let's look at the situation
1. Connexions gone
2. School based careers work under the direction of largely inexperienced and unknowledgeable (about careers) SLTs
3. High levels of un and under employment of careers advisors
4. A National Careers Service which has a large number of lowly qualified/paid advisors unable to meet the needs of the population at large.
5. The contentious recommendations put forward by the NCC which led to the resignations
6. The widely reported skills gap and NEET/Youth Employment situation.
7. The announcement in yesterday's Queens Speech of 'Youth Traineeships' (had anyone heard of these before yesterday?)
In the midst of all this turmoil where are the professions' spokespeople? Both the NCC and CDI are silent, they may be taking stock, deciding which battles to fight, or they could be unwilling to challenge the current Government in its wholesale destruction of any form of a meaningful CEIAG framework.
My appeal to the CDI/NCC please, stand up for your professional members and supporters, stand up for young people. We are muttering on blogs; tweeting on twitter and moaning over coffee at the dire situation and the long term effects it will have on the country as a whole over the next 10-20 years.
1. Listen to your members. I know I'm not giving references and citing research, I'm speaking from the heart on behalf of many front line Careers folk who have shared with me their gut reactions. Find out what your members want/believe should happen.
We know that times are hard, we know there need to be rationalisations but that's not what has happened, I'll bet a pound to a penny that the Ofsted thematic revue comes up with the viewpoint that Careers in schools is failing in the main. Use that as a lever to shore up recommendations for a properly coordinated framework of Careers Work.
2. Listen to the acknowledged experts, ICEGS et al and make realistic recommendations (compromises) that address problems on either side.
Don't rely on CICs and charities to pick up the slack on youth employment - without coordination this will just lead to replication of work and poor return for money. Let the NCC/CDI act as arbiters of good practice - use them and their members to build a cost effective model for the 21st century.
3. Finally, get schools involved in the traineeships - don't let schools use them as a cop out - The old, "Well we don't need to teach them employability skills, traineeships will do that." Will lead to even more unfocussed and unemployable young people.
