Careers: are young people getting the information, advice and guidance they need?

Are young people getting the #careers information, advice and guidance they need? Listen here to our podcast on careers with thanks to Nicola Hall, Careers and Enterprise Company, Ryan Gibson, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Katy Tibbles, Turner Schools.

Mark Leech  0:12  
Hello and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech and today we're going to be talking about the wide world of careers and careers education. Ofsted has recently published 'The independent review of careers guidance in schools and further education and skills providers' - quite a long title.  But a very interesting report and we'll talk about that in a little while. Joining me today I have quite a big panel actually Paul Joyce Ofsted's Deputy Director for further education and skills, Ian Tustian, who is an advisor on policy and quality of training at Ofsted. Nicola Hall, who is Director of Education at the Careers and Enterprise Company, Ryan Gibson, who is senior advisor for careers at the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and Katy Tibbles, the trust head of careers at Turner Schools. Nicola, I wonder if you can talk a bit about the current landscape and the big changes in careers guidance in schools and further education recently and a bit about the pressures on careers leaders at the moment?

Nicola Hall  1:22  
So, the careers guidance system has changed immeasurably over the last few years, and has really significantly moved forward. And we now see a modern industry-lead careers guidance system, which has been embedded through a national infrastructure of careers hubs, which is delivered and led by trained and qualified careers leaders across the country. So over 3000 careers leaders have now been trained through a fully funded suite of qualifications, which is supported by the Department for Education. We've seen over recent years almost universal adoption of the Gatsby benchmarks across schools, special schools and colleges throughout England. And those benchmarks set out a world class standard for those institutions to follow. And there's no cost to any of these services to educational institutions in England. Additional changes include a really increased focus on parental engagement within careers guidance, but also the introduction of enhanced provider access legislation to ensure that young people are accessing parity of impartial information regarding apprenticeships and technical education. Whilst the professional status of careers leaders and the elevation of careers leadership develops well across the country. There are still some pressures that we commonly see. Firstly, a lack of strategic leadership support. This strategic support allows careers to be aligned when it's done well to school development and improvement priorities. Another potential barrier for careers leaders is when they are being asked to undertake two roles. So that of the role of careers leader which is oversight and leadership of the whole careers programme in an institution. But also sometimes it can be problematic when the careers leader is also asked to undertake the role of impartial specialists careers advisor. Both of these roles are essential within the careers guidance system. But both of them are significant in size. And if we see those two roles conflated it can pose challenges for careers leaders. In some cases, careers leaders have a lack of allocated time and resource. For example, it might be still commonplace in some institutions, for careers leaders to have a small TLR (teaching and learning responsibility) and a couple of hours a week allocated to careers leadership. In the context of the size of the role and the achievement of the eight Gatsby benchmarks. This is likely to be insufficient, unless there is well layered wider operational support for the careers leader. And sometimes careers leaders can tell us that they're a lone voice. However, I like to liken careers to agendas like literacy, and the development of literacy so that everyone in a school or a college has responsibility to be careers curious to be able to hold careers, conversations with young people and to be able to effectively signpost to specialists as well as help young people understand careers opportunities by building those conversations into curriculum plans.

Mark Leech  4:37  
Thanks. Thanks, Nichola. So there's lots to unpack there and I think maybe before we come to the Ofsted team to talk a bit about our report and what it what it found it be quite interesting to hear from Katy, I think on on some of those challenges and how you deal with them, I suppose in in the day job as it were. 

Katy Tibbles  4:58  
Lots of the points that Nicola has highlighted, things that either I've experienced in the past, or I know that my peers in other schools are still experiencing, particularly around the pressures involved with careers leadership and the need to have a strategic role and to have a vision and to be in a position where you can drive that forward. I do know lots of careers leaders who are also careers advisors. And that's something that doesn't sit very comfortably with me, because I think they are two very different roles. 

Mark Leech  5:34  
So yeah, to the uninitiated, include myself in that, do you want to join a break down the differences?

Katy Tibbles  5:40  
Yes. So for me, like a careers leader is you need to have a good knowledge and understanding of the careers landscape. But you need to be able to turn that then into a strategic vision that meets the needs of your school. So there's no one size fits all I would say in careers, the Gatsby benchmarks provide a fantastic framework for us all to work towards. But for a careers leader, you really need to consider how they fit within your own context, and how you can meet the needs of your pupils through the benchmark, that is quite a different skill set to perhaps a careers adviser who on a day to day basis, might be more operational, working more directly with the young people delivering guidance interviews. And there are two very different needs to different skill sets. Some people can do them both, which is fantastic. Some people have strengths in different each of those areas. So for me, I do think that that's very important to recognise the role that the careers leader plays beyond that of a careers advisor, and the need for that leadership, development, strategic thinking, but also to be able to be an advocate at a senior level for careers in a school because whilst we have made huge progress over the last few years, there is still a long way to go. Some circumstances there are senior leaders that still need a bit of convincing actually about how important careers is within a school setting. So your careers leader needs to be able to be an advocate for careers and always be fighting for it when we're talking about school priorities and trust priorities. They need to be the person in the room that saying, Okay, how can careers contribute to this?

Mark Leech  7:33  
Thank you. That's, that's really helpful. And I'm going to come to Ian in a second to talk about our report. But, Ryan, I just wanted to bring you in quickly because we've we've heard a lot about the Gatsby benchmarks. And again, if you're not from the careers world, you might not be as au fait with the with the benchmarks do want to talk a little bit about what they are, how they're used, and how that plays into the role of careers leaders in schools.

Ryan Gibson  7:56  
The Gatsby benchmarks as both Katy and Nicola have alluded to define what good looks like in relation to careers guidance, there based on international evidence of what works and achieving all of the elements of each of the benchmarks is what constitutes world class careers guidance. It's good to see the recent education select committee report and indeed, Ofsted independent review of careers guidance, recognising that schools and further education and skills providers find the Gatsby benchmarks useful in developing and reviewing their careers provision and was great to hear Katy allude to that just now. When we think about the benchmarks, they've become the bedrock really of career guidance in England. They're embedded in the government's career strategy, they are central to that. And CEC data shows that over 90% of schools and colleges now measure their progress against this framework. Nicola used the phrase almost universal adoption. And that's what we've seen, we've seen almost universal adoption of the benchmarks. And that's something that was confirmed in our own open consultation survey, which we ran at Gatsby earlier this year. It what that shows is that belief in the value of the benchmarks is strong, and it's widespread. And I think that's because they're working, and they're having an impact. We heard the importance there earlier of senior leaders and the role of senior leaders and senior leaders have consistently shared with us that the positive impacts that the benchmarks are having on outcomes for young people. And this is definitely reflected in national data, which I'm sure Nicola will, will talk about. But it shows that many more young people are leaving education with improved career readiness now, improved destination outcomes as well with the greatest impact being on some of the most disadvantaged young people in some of the most disadvantaged circumstances. 

Mark Leech  9:58  
Thanks, Ryan that's, that's really helpful. So I've got a couple of colleagues from Ofsted with me before going to - Paul, just quickly do you want to talk broadly about the part that careers plays in in our inspections?

Paul Joyce  10:15  
Sure, Mark, and really nice to hear colleagues there endorse many of the findings of our report. We all know careers, education, advice and guidance are absolutely essential to enable children and young people to understand the full range of available options. We really did see many examples of good practice, as we conducted the survey, a really strong commitment to providing good high quality careers advice and guidance. But as Nicola said in what I thought was an excellent summary, you know, much more work to do. It is an important part of of inspection in both schools, colleges and other providers. And inspectors do spend an amount of time focusing on careers advice and guidance, to make sure that children and young people are getting the full range of information and are equipped to make the right choices going forward. So really important part of of inspection, and really pleasing, Mark, as Nicola, Katy, Ryan have said that we have seen certainly on inspection, and as confirmed through this survey, and improved picture over time, significant change careers hubs, Gatsby benchmarks, tools and resources, making an awful lot of difference. Whilst not always, more to do and, you know, areas and aspects that could be better, but generally a positive picture, I think moving in the right direction.

Mark Leech  11:59  
Fantastic. Thanks. So. So Ian has been very patient. Do you want to come in and just add a little more to what Paul says?

Ian Tustian  12:06  
Absolutely. I mean, there's a couple of points that other guests have already said already. Katie talked about the sort of permeation, if you like of a culture through a school, and certainly in the work that we did, where we identified that high quality careers guidance, there was really a whole school approach. There was significant buy in from leaders and staff. And really that model  of effective careers being seen as everybody's responsibility in the school with that real clear emphasis on effective communication between the careers leader, between staff members, between career specialists, curriculum leaders, and the like  throughout the setting, and also in terms of reference to what Ryan talked about. We saw almost all schools using the Gatsby benchmarks to structure and review their careers programme, and school leaders viewing those benchmarks in a really sort of positive way. And as being a useful framework for what good practice looks like. In terms of in some of those those wider findings, in general, leaders in both schools and FE and skills providers understood their statutory responsibilities for careers. And that includes in reference to the updated January 23 guidance. And that came through strongly in much of the evidence collection that we did as part of the review. We saw many schools ensuring that pupils received the unbiased guidance that was balanced between those academic and vocational options. But that really wasn't the case in all schools. And actually, a lack of unbiased guidance wasn't usually about schools deliberately choosing to sort of push pupils in particular ways. More lack of that, that strategic planning again, which Katy and Nicola alluded to, and that that real careful attention to the needs of the individual young person in that setting, we saw teacher's knowledge of those technical pathways could be a little bit more limited, especially in respect of T levels. And with some learners in VI Forms and VI Form colleges really wanting more information on technical pathways, post 16 and post 18 as well. Gatsby four, which talks a lot about linking curriculum and careers together, we saw that working well actually in a lot of schools that we visited about two thirds of the schools. In those instances, we saw curriculum leaders working well with careers leaders, and assigning a high profile within subject areas to careers education, and we saw that integration of careers into curriculum plans. However, not always the case, though, and still some work to do in some instances and to make sure that, that work of the careers as Katie said that work of the careers leader is not in isolation, but feeling its way through into lessons so that young people are able to see how their learning in mathematics will help them going forward. We saw sometimes a lack of clarity around specific aims for year groups particularly lower down the school in year seven, eight, it  sometimes wasn't clear what the thinking behind the careers programme was. In terms of the pandemic, that negative impact on careers especially around work experience has moderated a little bit. As in the working world, as we're sat here working at home, there has been a change in the way that we work. And that's presented real challenges for schools in terms of ensuring that young people have those high quality encounters with the world of work. Two more points just quickly Mark, to draw on for schools and FE and schools, providers that were engaged with career hubs, we could see those played an important role in ensuring effective employee engagement and they contributed more widely to careers programmes. But one thing that leaders in schools and FE settings picked up was around the use of destinations data to improve careers provision, some noted it was actually really difficult in practice, because of time and resource to collect this data. And because of restrictions around things like data protection requirements, some leaders really wanted some additional help with this, and thought the system in their local area could be improved. So those are sort of if you like the broad brushstroke headlines from the thematic review.

Mark Leech  15:56  
Thanks Ian, so interested in views from colleagues, particularly from outside Ofsted whether you think that those findings chime with what you're seeing, I'm interested as well in this idea of the linkages with with employers, the opportunities for work experienc the impact of the pandemic, and how we're seeing things now a little while on from, from lockdown.

Nicola Hall  16:23  
it was great to hear Ian, refer to the efficacy of careers hubs when they're really being used well within local areas. But of course, some of our listeners might not know exactly what a careers hub is. So a careers hub is a place based entity whose function essentially is to bring together schools, colleges, employers, and apprenticeship providers, and frankly, anybody that is involved in the careers guidance ecosystem in a local area, across England. So we currently have 90% of schools and colleges that are eligible to join a careers hub there's geographical coverage for 90% of institutions in the country. And we expect that to rise to 95% across the course of this next year. So their goal locally is to make it easier for schools and colleges to improve their careers guidance offer to be able to enable and prepare young people for their next steps. So careers hubs support progress against the Gatsby benchmarks. And they help careers leaders to collaborate locally in a focused way, bringing together good practice and local labour market insight in particular. So, I see the careers hub as a dedicated support team for a careers leader. A careers leader in an institution should be connected into their local careers hub infrastructure, and they will be able to unlock some of the relationships and some of the developments that that help with some of the agenda issues that have been raised. So work experience opportunities, for instance, would be a good example of that. I mean, in essence, they are there to help a school build their capacity. They're, they're there to help careers leaders with their professional development. And they're also there to help them build networks, particularly with industry. So a careers hub will be able to point a careers leader to professional development opportunities, they will be able to signpost careers leaders to high quality and fully funded training offers to help them undertake their roles. They facilitate local communities of practice so that careers leaders can work together to share practice to not reinvent the wheel, and to really ensure that careers guidance keeps moving forward. But also careers hubs are able to unlock funding to pilot innovative approaches. At the moment, we have 10 projects across the country who are working intensively to support to support disadvantaged young people with effective transitions to further education. And it's a really intensive support programme. And those types of programmes come round all of the time. So this year, this financial year, we're focusing on investing an additional 3 million pounds across the country to support further work experience opportunities, and they look different in different parts of the country overall.  Careers hubs will be starting to really focus on quality of provision. And this year, they will start to implement something called the careers Impact System, which is a peer to peer review system to enable colleagues in schools and colleges to work together to really drive their strategic careers programmes forward so that they really are focusing on the needs of individual young people, irrespective of their circumstances in institutions across the country. In short, really you'd be crazy not to engage with your local careers hub, because it is their job to help you address some of the challenges that that have been surfaced as part of the Ofsted thematic review this year. And I think that the more engagement we have, the further and faster we can drive these initiatives forward across the whole country and really make a difference and impact for every young person.

Ryan Gibson  20:28  
I would endorse exactly what Nicholas said engagement with careers hopes sees accelerated progress in terms of Gatsby benchmark achievement. And we know the more benchmarks that are achieved the greater impact on outcomes for young people. Just picking up on that point on employers. Employers are absolutely crucial to good career guidance, and probably worth just reflecting back on the framework of the Gatsby benchmarks here. It essentially provides a common language for engagement and benchmarks five and six, in particular focus on employers and experiences of workplaces. But of course, employers can have a role across many of the benchmarks. And we've seen tremendous practice, for example, in employers supporting schools to link curriculum to careers (benchmark four in our language). And there are many ways that employers can engage. And these are outlined in our 'Navigating the education landscape' document, and indeed, picking up on that consultation that we held at Gatsby earlier in this year. We saw employers agree that the benchmarks provide a strong framework for career guidance for employers endorsing that. And employers actually themselves identified an improved relationship between educational institutions and employers as a result of the Gatsby benchmarks. So employers are absolutely crucial. And we see fantastic engagement through career hubs.

Katy Tibbles  22:02  
Just to really reinforce everything that Ryan and Nicola have said, to pick up on Nicholas point, actually about careers can sometimes be lonely. People often say that when you work in careers, sometimes you are the only person in the school, I'm really lucky because I have a team, which is fantastic. But not all schools are that fortunate. And it can be a lonely world. So actually linking in with those networks that are available through the hub, through other schools, which you know, the careers hub helped bring together as well, I think that is incredibly important. So, again, when we're thinking about the pressures on careers, leaders, they can get support from those networks, it is important that they engage, because there are, there's support there. And there are opportunities there. So it doesn't have to be a lonely world. And it doesn't have to be pressurised because there are solutions out there.

Ian Tustian  23:00  
Young people are still saying that they value those quality experiences in the workplace and how important they are in terms of future career decisions. And thinking about those in the round beyond simply a week in year 10 or a week in year 12. Thinking about those in terms of running a student enterprise, participating in things like social action projects, work tasters, and those those that wider opportunity to engage with those employees. And the pandemic has had an impact there. And schools are working hard to try and try and if you like rekindle some of those relationships with employers to make sure that pupils can benefit from those those wider experiences.

Nicola Hall  23:38  
It's a common misconception that work experience is the only approach. And in some, in some institutions, a traditional form of work experience works brilliantly well. And it's well established. But there are many, many opportunities to embed experiences of the workplace and encounters with employers across a whole school offer and in a very progressive way, from year seven all the way through to year 13. To enable young people to really layer and layer and layer experiences with employers and industry all the way through. And some of those are much more achievable than the logistical challenge of taking 200 young people in a in a year group out for a week's work experience overall. And also those opportunities will present themselves all the way through an academic year, not just in one week's window in the course of a year. So we are really urging school leaders to think hard about their models of experiences of the workplace.

Ryan Gibson  24:44  
The benchmark is carefully titled 'experiences of workplaces', and that's to allow that deliberate flexibility experiences of workplaces are absolutely crucial, but there are many different models. Thinking about the purpose of the experiences and how they're set and sequenced within a progressive programme and approach is absolutely crucial. And that's what we've seen when we've engaged with both employers, schools. And when we spoken to lots of young people as well.

Katy Tibbles  25:16  
From our kind of on the ground perspective of how we are actually making that happen, because I think sometimes, for leaders in schools, they can think it's a very big challenge to meet that benchmark. And it can be quite overwhelming. And they think it's going to be complicated. But actually, there are some really easy solutions. So, so we do do work experience all of our year 10s, and twelves, in all of our schools go out and do work experience. But in addition to that we might do for example, you know, take the Business Studies class to go and visit a workplace just for a couple of hours. Or even more simple than that is right from year seven, when you're doing a trip, build into that trip, the people that you meet to talk about their job. So if you go to a museum, when you're arranging that visit, ask if there is somebody there a curator that has 10 minutes to spare to talk to pupils about what they do in that setting. Because every single time you take children out of school, the chances are, you're going to some kind of workplace. So there are so many opportunities there to hear from all of these different people. And actually, it's just incorporated in what you're already doing. It doesn't have to be an arduous activity.

Ian Tustian  26:39  
And absolutely Katy that extends to pupils with special educational needs as well. In some of the the evidence that we collected as part of the review, we came across schools, for instance, running specific career sessions for pupils with SEND to focus on things like life skills, managing home and travel training. And in one school, we came across an instance where pupils were actually given a fake bank account and credit card and had to play the role in terms of visiting the bank. So it's that preparedness in terms of the range of careers and sort of workplace opportunities are there beyond school.

Nicola Hall  27:08  
Probably helpful at this point, also to mention a tool that's available to careers leaders and school leaders, which is called the future skills questionnaire, future skills questionnaire is available at key stage three, key stage four key stage five, and there is also a special educational needs version of the questionnaire. And what that helps education leaders to do is measure the effectiveness of their careers programme through the voice of their young people. So essentially, the questionnaire measures careers readiness in young people. So an education leader is able to use that with their cohorts all the way through from year seven, to see the growth in their development, all the way through their school journey and their careers learning journey as it progresses through the school itself. What it helps you to do very, very quickly, is identify gaps in your careers programme and provision through the eyes of the young people that you're delivering it to. And and I think actually, from my perspective, as a school leader, it's an absolute game changer in terms of being able to listen to your young people at scale in your institution, and really make adjustments to the strategy to make sure that it's responsive to the young people within your cohort.

Mark Leech  28:26  
course, those are those academic pathways are have changed are changing. Paul, I mean, I don't know if you want to talk a bit about T levels. We've we've looked separately in a separate study at the introduction of of T levels. And I think we've had some positive things to say but recognise that there were perhaps some some early early issues, some teething problems in the introduction of T levels. How do you see that playing out in the careers work?

Paul Joyce  28:54  
Yeah, thanks, Mark. And I think the conversation has come around to the crux of the matter, really. And that is the focus on the quality of the careers programme for the individual for the cohort. So you mentioned T levels Mark, and there's a lot of change in the technical and vocational, post 16 landscape, and we certainly found on T levels. And as Ian has already said, we found also on the career survey, where knowledge and understanding of technical and vocational routes, particularly T levels, is a little bit thin on the ground at the moment, perhaps not surprising. They are relatively new. But certainly a key job for careers leaders, careers advisors, is to ensure the knowledge of those full range of options post 16 and post 18 to ensure that children and young people are getting the right information and are getting the right encounters, the right experience. To make those choices, some will have a very clear idea of what they want to do and what path to go on. Others are going to need more help.

Ryan Gibson  29:03  
At Gatsby, we're thinking about the next 10 years of good career guidance and what would potentially lead to even greater impact on outcomes for young people. And of course, careers advice is is absolutely crucial, that role of personal guidance, benchmark eight in particular. And at Gatsby, we're really pleased to be working with the CDI, the Career Development Institute on a project to build career advisor awareness of the technical options that exist, so that they have got an up to date understanding of those options

Paul Joyce  30:53  
As qualifications change, as the landscape changes, absolutely vital that careers advisors are, are in front of the curve there really, so they know what the landscape looks like. They're equipped to provide that essential information, advice and guidance that our children young people are going to need.

Ian Tustian  31:15  
Absolutely. And building on what you've said, Paul, and what Ryan said, through this through the work that we did, as part of this review, we did see that pupils' awareness and understanding of the technical and vocational pathways varying across schools. About half of the schools, pupils said they didn't really understand the technical pathways well enough, or the inspector noted that they weren't able to demonstrate a real detailed knowledge of them. And again, that's not because, the review certainly didn't find that the schools were sort of shovelling, if you like, pupils into square pegs into round holes in effect in terms of pathways, but it came back to that strategic planning, that strategic understanding across school settings, and within careers advice to ensure that that knowledge was at hand so it could be shared, so that pupils were able to make those clear individual choices that were that were best suited to their needs.

Paul Joyce  32:01  
The provider access legislation, the so called Baker Clause,  the key thing that inspectors look at on inspection. But you know that the most important thing is making sure that the careers, leaders, careers advisors themselves, have a really clear understanding about what those options are for the young people that they are advising,

Nicola Hall  32:26  
it's really important that all young people get this information. I think, you know, historically, we may have seen some selection around which young people are accessing what types of information about different types of provision. But obviously, we have a moral responsibility to make sure that every young person has a full suite of information to enable them to make those really well informed choices overall,

Ian Tustian  32:51  
Some schools, the fact that key stage four options can actually create a barrier to pupil's future pathways and future possible career avenues. The importance of effective careers advice, helping people see beyond their immediate next step, seeing their next step. Next step in effect, you know, if young people are thinking about choosing their degree course, for instance, what does that mean to them post 21. But especially around key stage four options, what does that mean for me? How does that limit? Or actually how does that create further opportunity for me, post 16 post 18, post 21.

Katy Tibbles  33:24  
Our careers programme starts in year seven. And that is incredibly important to us it is front loaded, because they need a whole core foundation of knowledge and skills before they reach those key decision making times in their lives. So for us, we start in year seven, and we start talking about pathways and options. And it's not about them making a choice at that stage is just making them aware that there are different pathways. All of our year nines take part in a workshop. It's called what happens next. And we do exactly what you have said Ian, we talk about not just the next step, but the step after that. And even the step after that, because particularly for those young people that do have a career goal in mind that are very focused and they have a dream. They need to know that the choices they make at 14 affect the choices they can make at 16 which then affect the choices they can make at 18. 

Mark Leech  34:26  
So thank you to all of you for joining today Paul, Nicola, Ian, Ryan and Katy. I hope you enjoyed listening and you will join us again on the next edition of Ofsted Talks, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts.

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