Outstanding Careers | Careers Education Consultant | Ofsted Inspection Careers

Cultivating Optimism and Hope -Government response to the Education committee recommendations for CEIAG Pt 6

Saturday 30th September 2023

The sixth and last in my series of blogs about the Government's response to the Education Select Committee's recommendations for CEIAG.

Link to part 1 The system of CEIAG can be found here
Link to part 2 Organisations Delivering CEIAG here
Link to part 3 Primary Careers can be found here
Link to part 4 Careers in the Curriculum here
Link to part 5 - Connecting Employers with School here

Cultivating Optimism and Hope: Improving CEIAG provision for specific groups of pupils

• Our ambition is to have a high-quality careers offer that works for everybody.
• Schools should target their CEIAG offer to individual pupils as outlined in Gatsby Benchmark 3
• Our primary careers pilot is working to improve the outcomes for pupils in disadvantaged areas and we will continue to learn what works best from the results of the pilot.
• The CEC have a community improvement fund that helps support this outcome.

• We agree with the Committee that careers support for pupils with SEND is vitally important.
• The school governing body should provide clear advice and support for the Career Leader who is responsible for developing a strategic careers plan. They should also be working with the SENCO.
• The CEC is funded to work with all school personnel and this should include SENCOs. A training mobule will be released this autumn.

• The Department was delighted to announce the Supported Internship pilot. We are seeking to test whether the Supported Internship pilot improves employment outcomes for young people aged 16-24 with complex SEND / Learning Difficulties or Disabilities who need extra support to progress to sustained, paid employment and do not have education, health and care plans. We have invited a small number of local authorities from a mix of urban and rural areas to bid for funding to take part in the pilot and expect delivery to begin during this autumn term, running until March 2025.
• We will evaluate the programme after it has finished and decide if it will be rolled out nationwide.

• We've put a lot of money into Pupil Premium and it's up to local authorities Virtual School Head (VSH) to distribute the funds. We have been clear that this funding can and should be used to improve careers advice, information, and guidance on apprenticeships

• The Committee is justified in singling out young carers and care leavers as an area of focus where more can be achieved for young people outside of mainstream schooling.
• Young carers and care leavers should now be identified within the school census data and being able to identify these young people will allow schools to be able to support them better.
• The CEC is working with Youth Employment UK to build a suite of resources to support young carers.
• The NCS can support young carers and care leavers also.
• They also point out the increase in the care leaver apprenticeship bursary from £1,000 to £3,000

from August 2023. Local authorities must provide a £2,000 bursary for care leavers who go to university.

• We agree, young people not in mainstream education e.g. the home educated and NEET should be better supported and we are awaiting outcome of the CEC & Youth Employment Uk's report.
• We are committed to ensuring that young people outside of mainstream education have access to improved CEIAG support.

• The Department agrees with the Committee for the need for statutory local authority registers for children not in school and we are committed to working towards this end. In the meantime we continue to work with Local Authorities on their non statutory registers. We have been collecting data on Children Missing Education (CMEs) since October 2022.
• There was a call for evidence on CMEs which closed in July 2023. This is being considered and will be published in due course.
• Some Career Hubs are working on this in their areas.

I'm not using these blogs to comment on the rights and wrongs of these responses, though I'll be very happy to hear your views.

You can find the full report here