CEIAG & Careers Leaders
The New Careers Strategy
Tuesday 5th December 2017
Yesterday at the CDI Conference in Birmingham, Anne Milton MP announced the long awaited Careers Strategy to a packed hall of careers advisers, teachers and other interested parties.
This post attempts to succinctly point to key points of the Careers Strategy that directly affect the provision within a school. There are plenty of other things in the strategy which is mainly positive for the careers world but I won't be covering those here as my aim is to provide a quick overview for a time poor audience of teachers and school leaders who need a quick checklist of where to focus their attention.
Firstly - An important development to take note of is that there is a trial to establish best practice for introducing careers activities and interactions in primary school - this won't affect most secondary schools as yet but it will do in the future. You know your feeder schools. In my experience many primary schools are already delivering such activities and I'm sure you will have a conversation with them to establish what is going on.
Immediate effect - From January
The Careers Strategy appears to signal that there will be new Statutory Guidance for careers in schools in January
Gatsby is signaled to be the gold standard of provision and ALL schools will be expected to use it to model their provision.
The Baker Clause I blogged about here recently comes into effect on 2nd January and requires schools to provide access to employers and providers
Ofsted is mentioned on pages:-
6 -The inspection of National Careers Service providers (2 out of 8 have been graded outstanding)
8 & 20 - Ofsted will continue to hold schools and colleges to account for the quality of careers provision. This includes a new requirement for Ofsted to comment in college inspection reports on the careers guidance provided to students from January 2018. Careers - related provision is already considered under three of the four areas evaluated as part of school inspections.
20 - The Department will engage with Ofsted , as it reviews the Common Inspection Framework, to consider coverage of careers provision as part of the development of any planned changes to school and college inspection arrangements which will take effect from September 2019. In developing its approach to assessing careers provision as part of those changes, Ofsted will take account of the requirements within the new statutory guidance for schools, which is being updated to reflect the Gatsby Benchmarks.
29 - The role of OFSTED in identifying how well the further education and skills sector is preparing young people with high needs for adult life (2016) "Moving Forward?"
33 - Destination Data. This year these were published in performance tables for the first time . Ofsted also take destination measures into account as part of their inspection framework. The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset links information on education with employment data and is demonstrating the impact that different decisions about education and training have on employment outcomes. It also points out later in the Careers Strategy that "Data on student destinations (will be) widely available and easily understandable by people of all ages"
By Sept 2018
Schools and colleges are expected to publish details of their careers programme for young people and their parents .
Job specification and standards for Careers Leaders developed and started to be used by schools and colleges .
A named Careers Leader should lead the careers programme in every school and college.
By end of 2020
All schools and colleges will have access to an Enterprise Adviser.
Schools should offer every young person seven encounters with employers - at least one each year from years 7 to 13 - with support from the CEC. Some of these encounters should be with STEM employers.
Other aspects which will have an effect but don't necessaryly need to be addressed by schools today:-
CEC will be responsible for supporting ALL 8 Gatsby benchmarks
CEC will provide tools to help schools and colleges meet the Gatsby Benchmarks.
Careers Leaders training funded for 500 schools and colleges.
20 Careers hubs funded by Govt with a coordinator from the CEC.
New NCS contracts will be awarded at the expiration of the previous ones.
New standardised application forms tested to make it easier for young people to apply to further education.
All this info has been gleaned from a quick review of the new Careers Strategy. I may well find other aspects which require further attention, later on. Keep watching
