CEIAG & Careers Leaders

Connecting Employers with schools - Government response to the Education committee recommendations for CEIAG Pt5

Friday 29th September 2023

The fifth 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


  • Work experience should be as straightforward as possible and the Career Hubs are doing a lot to support this aim, including standardised templates and procedures to streamline safeguarding.
  • Work is ongoing in identifying barriers for employers and ways to remove the barriers and to align placements to address areas of skill shortages.


  • The DFE has asked the CEC to develop and deliver an Experiences of the Workplace strategy. This will include job shadowing, workplace visits, working on 'employer briefs', and virtual experiences with employers
  • The CEC has developed 'Employer Standards' a digital benchmarking tool for employers to self assess their own offer.
  • The CEC Careers Impact System will allow schools to self assess their efficacy in supporting Gatsby Benchmark 6.


  • The CEC publish a Provider Directory to support the finding of delivery providers. They are quality assured by the CEC.
  • We agree there is possibly a case for an online platform for local/national work experience opportunities. However, this would be a long term project that would require collaboration from many stakeholders. We will consider it as part of our Strategic Action Plan.


  • We agree it is important that schools meet this legal requirement and have asked the CEC to include sections in the Compass+ tool for schools to confirm they have met the requirement.
  • Careers Hubs are working with schools to ensure that they understand the requirements and make arrangements to meet them.
  • There is a 'ladder of support' as detailed in the statutory guidance on page 52 to enforce compliance.
  • Ofsted's school inspection handbook was updated in 2021 to make clear that if a school is not meeting the requirements of the provider access legislation, inspectors will state this in the inspection report.


  • Ofsted inspects the quality of careers provision in schools.
  • Before each inspection a data set is provided which includes destination data, this allows inspectors to judge if a balanced and unbiased offer is being delivered and to enquire further if they feel it may not be.
  • The Government is providing a lot of information to publicise T Levels and apprenticeships as well as technical qualifications. They believe they are actively promoting parity of esteem.

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. Look out for the next section tomorrow.

Of course, if you can't wait and you'd like to read the entire report you can do so here