CEIAG for Headteachers, Governors and SLT
An update on Careers Guidance in Ofsted Inspections Nov 2015
Tuesday 17th November 2015
At the recent Careers England Careers Summit, there was a fantastic array of speakers. Amongst the speakers was Karen Adriaanse, the lead inspector for careers guidance & skills at Ofsted. I managed to ask Karen a question about the new short inspections.
... under the new Common Inspection Framework there seems to be a persistent idea that in the short inspections it is very unlikely that school would face questions about careers provision. I just wondered if there was anything that I could take back to teachers to clarify that?
Her reply boiled down to this
Under the Common Inspection Framework, more schools will face short inspections undertaken with the hypothesis that school is doing well. The inspectors will go in with a series of indicators that they are looking at in order to confirm that hypothesis. If the lead inspector finds information to cast doubt about the efficacy of the school's performance they have the power to change to a full inspection.
Karen has trained all HMI on the importance of careers and what to look for. She reads all secondary Ofsted reports and will be forming a judgement over the coming months about the need for any further training.
So what can teachers, governors and senior leaders take from this? I take my opinion from a mixture of the speech Karen made, the CIF itself, conversations I've had with recently Ofsted inspected schools.
Ofsted may or may not ask you specifically about careers in your school but they will ask pupils questions which will inform the inspectors about the state of career readiness of your pupils. The chances are, if they're asking you questions then your pupils haven't convinced the inspectors that you have a solid framework behind your careers provision.
So the questions you should be asking yourself is
1) Do my pupils know what our careers framework is and why we do what we do?
2) Do my staff know what our careers framework is and why we do what we do?
3) Do my pupils know what our careers framework is and why we do what we do?
More to the point
Can my pupils explain to anyone that asks, what our careers framework looks like and what has it done for them?
