AEIAG0106

Written evidence submitted by Talentino

Introduction     Talentino is an award winning, independent early career development company that focuses on getting young people with SEND career ready. We work with around 300 special schools in England building capacity and capability to deliver our specialist careers programmes which focus on improving career outcomes after school. In 2018, we were appointed as the strategic partner for SEND for the Careers and Enterprise Company and continue to enable them to deliver an increasingly valuable service on behalf of these young people. We target and work with the key stakeholders in early career development in this country – CEC, CDI, Dr Deirdre Hughes and Sir John Holman. Talentino carries out a bi-annual Social Impact Report on our work https://www.talentinocareers.co.uk/social-impact-report.pdf We have just written and published the Little SEND Careers Handbook  (Do it like you mean it) which we can provide on request.

The following paper will enable the Education Select Committee to understand who young people with SEND are (sadly, many policy makers do not) which is critical to achieve change; the optimum career outcomes they could enjoy; the barriers they face to achieving them and a delivery model that could improve their chances whilst positioning this within the wider Careers and Employer landscape.

Executive Summary – expressed as issues and resolutions

Issue One – Confusion over Careers Terminology There continues to be confusion about what the different terms - careers guidance / careers advice / CEIAG/ careers education actually mean. Resolution Ensure future recommendations begin with an explicit glossary of Careers Terms 

Issue Two – Lack of knowledge about who young people with SEND are There is very little understanding of WHO young people with SEND are and this has a major impact on the probability of them achieving their optimum career outcome or it being available in some cases.                                             

Resolution Adopt the core narrative around early career development and SEND developed by Talentino as identified in the ‘Little SEND Careers Handbook’ referencing the two Career SEND Groups – Career SEND Group One (typically will not take GCSEs or Level 2 qualifications and for whom a positive career outcome will be an Inclusive Apprenticeship, Supported Internship, Supported employment, FE College, T Level) and Career SEND Group Two (typically will or could take GCSEs/Level 2 qualifications and higher and should enjoy the same career outcomes as their peers – Apprenticeships, University, Employment, T Levels – but often don’t due to multiple barriers) so that career conversations focus on positive career outcomes and the pathways towards them and not on disabilities and what ‘they can’t do’. This narrative is used by the CEC as part of Compass + and we train many non-SEND specialists including Careers Advisers, Enterprise Coordinators and employers who find it very helpful as it builds confidence and commitment to this group and reduces anxiety around diversity which can exist.

Issue Three – Career development is a process with multiple components and stakeholders but is often approached in an islandic way Each stakeholder is concerned with their own part of the process but there is little connectivity in the process and or between major stakeholders. For young people with SEND or who are vulnerable / disadvantaged, their life is impacted by DFE; DWP; DHSC, Cabinet Office; CDI and (the lack of) SEND Careers Advisers; Employers; Careers Leaders; Parents/Carers/Families; SENCOs; Local Authorities and other agencies.       

Resolution Establish a careers culture that identifies a Value Chain of Early Career Development’, identify the intersections of the process and where stakeholders connect, and create better connectivity, less duplication, better value for money and manage this group through a joint DFE/DWP management team. This Value Chain would be the basis of the all-ages Career process embracing the ‘ages and stages’ approach see below.

Issue Four – Lack of recognition of the ‘ages and stages’ of Career Development as a process and what is needed at each ‘age and stage’ The focus of heated debates about careers in England often focuses on who is responsible for a component of the process and not the whole process itself and not on the outcomes and what is needed to improve them.   

Resolution Acknowledge the ‘ages and stages’ needed at different times in life identified as Pre work skills development; Entry Skills Development and Adult Skills Development and create a career development delivery model that delivers for each age and stage.

Issue Five – Lack of joined up thinking around the key career challenges for young people with SEND Because many people do not understand who these young people are, policy decisions are made that are blunt and do not improve employment levels. For example, £18.1 million of funding has been announced to increase the number of Supported Internships but 97% young people with SEND are excluded from this opportunity as they do not have an Education Healthcare plan.

Resolution Surface the barriers / key career challenges and mitigate through a combination of informed macro level inter-departmental policy, managed through a cross- department team that understands and stimulates hyper local delivery of careers services that result in improved employment outcomes. It makes sense whether you are an economist or concerned with health/mental health or just plain ethics. Example - A quick win is to remove the career advantage of having an EHC Plan by extending Supported Internships and Inclusive Apprenticeships to all young people with SEND requiring DFE, DWP and Treasury to work together. With an employment rate of 60% plus on completion of these schemes, makes for a reduction in the budget of DWP and increase in revenue for Treasury!

Issue Six – Insufficient Supply of employer led training and employment opportunities straight from education Young people with SEND are getting career ready at school / special schools but not enough opportunities are available when they leave and most go to FE College. Two phrases are used – falling off a cliff and progress to regress. What this means is young people repeat work they did at school at FE College, do not progress and end up in work.                                                                                             Resolution Firstly, galvanise the 21,000 Disability Confident Employers to offer training / employment opportunities to the 10,000 school leavers from special schools annually and report back on what they are doing. Secondly, create an awareness campaign for Inclusive Apprenticeships for employers, Colleges, training providers and schools/special schools so we can see a groundswell in the number being offered. We can put you in touch with great people who are working in this area.

Issue Seven – (difficult one) Parents/Carers/Families of young people with SEND can sometimes get in the way of their child’s aspirations being raised for training and work This is tricky but it is a complex picture for them, the day job is hard enough, the family might be multi-generational unemployed, they may have learning/communication barriers themselves. Research shows parents are more likely to be less well off, more likely to have health/mental health problems, be isolated or and have economic challenges or be unemployed and lack support.      Resolution Provide the local Parent, Carer, Family Forums with additional input into what effective early career development looks like and run parallel careers programmes for them and ensure schools/special schools/FE Colleges are fully engaging them and start early in Primary.

How does Talentino contribute to the wider Early Career Development Landscape for young people with SEND?

Talentino specialises in working to improve the quality and relevance of the early career development of young people with additional needs in special schools across England. Created by Jenny Connick FRSA, 11 years ago, our focus has always been on what employers need and with a background as an HR Director, this philosophy has always driven our work.

We improve the capability and capacity of staff in special schools and schools and most recently, FE Colleges to deliver the Talentino career development programmes – Careers at EVERY Level and It’s in the Box! Both of which deliver the Gatsby Benchmarks. Careers at EVERY Level is a specialist programme for young people with learning difficulties who would not take GCSEs or Level 2 qualifications (Career SEND Group 1). It has a very positive approach to securing employer led training and working opportunities straight from school.

Both programmes start with a career’s health-check enabling a school to ‘audit’ it’s Careers Strategy, Careers Leadership, Career delivery model, SEND related Careers Activities and arrangements for Careers Guidance as well as checking the compliance against the statutory obligations including the Baker Clause. The results are then co-related to the range of destinations currently achieved by students and what needs to be put into place to expand the range of optimum career outcomes students access after school. Most go on to FE College where the anecdotal employment rate is only 27%.

We run a SEND Careers conference annually which is free for our special schools to attend, during COVID it was a four-day virtual Festival. In 2021, it was filmed and released for free for anyone to access. Regular speakers include Sir John Holman, Oli de Botton, Dame Christine Lenehan and Jan Ellis. The event is CPD certified by the CDI.

We publish papers (SEND Review post 16), and have developed a model for SEND early career development called #sameandifferent https://www.talentinocareers.co.uk/same-and-different.pdf We have been invited to the DFE roundtable discussion in April hosted by Professor Sir John Holman, the Department for Education’s Independent Strategic Adviser on Careers Guidance, to discuss his developing strategic vision for the government’s future careers guidance system.

Talentino pushed for the Careers and Enterprise Company to include SEND when they were first created but they were not mandated at that time to work with special schools and had no real organisational capability in this area. With our founding special school Brookfields https://www.talentinocareers.co.uk/special-schools.html we continued to push and were the first case study on the then Enterprise Adviser Training programme. We were commissioned to write the first and second SEND Gatsby Toolkits and are currently writing version 3. Our contract as the strategic partner for SEND runs to March 2023 and has been re-contracted annually since 2018.

We run SEND Careers Masterclasses for Careers Advisers for the CDI both in England and Northern Ireland.

GROWTH – An all-ages career development skills model for England

Recognising that there are a three ages and stages within early Career development is the first step in creating a model which moves smoothly bringing with it all the key stakeholders. GROWTH stands for Gain skills, Rehearse working, Own it – career management, Widen knowledge, Take action, Home – landing with employer that is right for you. We have also introduced the idea of a 9th Gatsby Benchmark – Skills development

** In the process of developing this model, we looked at Generation Z born after 1995 (users in this category) and what their characteristics look like and how that might affect a careers model. These young people are described as being the first Digital Natives, concerned with security, pragmatic, financially minded being shrewd consumers, politically progressive, high functioning with a prevalence of mental health issues, diversity is their norm, socially minded and independent thinkers. All of which provide ‘clues’ as to the design of any new Careers and skills proposition.

Direct response to some of the Committee’s questions

• Whether the current system of careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG) is serving young people – it serves some young people some of the time but for those with additional needs, for most of them it doesn’t result in optimum career outcomes either after school or subsequently.

• Whether and how the Government should bring responsibility for CEIAG under one body, for example a National Skills Service, to take overall responsibility for CEIAG for all ages, and how this might help young people navigate the CEIAG system. National Careers Service

Skill development is one aspect of the career development process; more attention needs to be paid to creating a value chain of early career development comprising of all the components.

In 2012, Michael Gove ceased funding the Careers Advisor service in England saving £486 million with no apparent future plan. Schools were left without a careers strategy for 5 years and Careers Advisers became a paid for service with schools having no additional budget to pay the bill.

The point we are making is this enquiry is a BRILLIANT opportunity to create a macro country level careers strategy that is cohesive and is delivered through a number of different stakeholders who come together to under the patronage of a joint DFE/DWP management team. Each stakeholder would be highly competent at delivering their own component of the Career Development process. Existing delivery organisations can be mandated to work together and create this process and become expert practitioners in their field without throwing everything up in the air which loses time, money and expertise.

Continuing to artificially separate early career development into separate chunks – Careers Guidance activities, Gatsby Benchmarks, Personal Guidance, Skill development, Career exploration, Employer engagement activities and Career Management diminishes the possibility of improving career outcomes.

Without DFE and DWP working together, young people with additional needs will continue to achieve poor career outcomes as the barriers to their career success reside at the intersection of these two departments.

Furthermore, if the CEC’s mandate could be extended to include first career step after school / College then the employment rate for these young people would escalate. It makes no sense to spend time and money to create 1000s of employer relationships in schools that drain away on leaving school when young people with SEND particularly are at their most vulnerable.

• Whether such a National Skills Service is best placed in the Department for Education or the Department of Work and Pensions to avoid duplication of work. See above

• Whether organisations like the Careers Enterprise Company and National Careers Service provide value for money to the taxpayer. It is very difficult to establish the total cost of the National Careers Service so we cannot comment on their value for money, but it is not a go organisation for young people we work with.

With regards to the Careers and Enterprise Company, they are a very different organisation to the one that was created in 2015/16 which did not pay attention to the right things necessarily.

Their organisational structure now facilitates career development in schools, all types of special schools and FE Colleges primarily dictated by securing the successful achievement of the Gatsby Benchmarks and the engagement of 1000s of employers through Careers Hubs. However, the organisational design could be better thought through. Staff in Careers Hubs are funded partly by DFE and partly by LEPs supported by 1000s volunteers from business which means the delivery could be prone to inconsistencies.

Relying on a huge volunteer contingent is an odd way to approach the economic success of this country, not the fault of the CEC but a bit of a relic that needs developing further! However, the CEC have made it work and many schools and special schools are embedded into a Careers Hub with trained Careers Leaders served by an Enterprise Coordinator and Enterprise Adviser volunteer all engaged in the improvement of career development for young people.

Talentino is proud to say that we have trained well over half the network with the SEND Masterclass as well as creating the basis for Compass for special schools. We believe this network of professionals, passionate about improving outcomes for young people with SEND who could be the most significant group to contribute to this.

In terms of their value for money, we believe the work they do should be leveraged further especially in employer engagement and continuing that into the next career step after school. Once the young people leave school / FE College, those employer relationships are broken but they could be sustained if the mandate of the CEC continued to include the first post education career step and adult education.

We would like to see the mission of the CEC be developed further from ‘find best next step’ to achieve next best step’ making the vision more potent.

The other area that no one seems to own and would fit with this extended mandate is to explore and articulate what good destinations look like. Massive amounts of data is collected but part from a young person not being NEET, what would the consensus view be. There is definitely work to be done here and for young people with SEND, this is vital if we want to improve outcomes.

• How careers and skills guidance could be better embedded in the curriculum across primary, secondary, further, higher and adult education, to ensure all learners are properly prepared for the world of work 

Continue to build on the work being done now through the Gatsby Benchmarks and the CEC by developing the careers model into a career development process and position it in this way. The process could include the activities contained within the delivery of the Gatsby Benchmarks in addition to a skills development curriculum delivered through Skills Frameworks or and Enterprise, becoming Gatsby Benchmark 9. Adding to what is working already is a cost-effective way to introduce new services. Mandate skills development though the National Curriculum and ensure Ofsted inspect how it is delivered

• How schools could be supported to better fulfil their duties to provide careers advice and inform students of technical, as well as academic, pathways. 

Schools know what needs to be done and good schools will always go the extra mile. The work of the CEC is ensuring more and more schools know what has to be done but schools have to be encouraged to give time for this work to be done. Careers Leaders often have little time as well as having another job to fulfil.

Careers Advisers are not always available and budgets are stretched. There is a shortage of Careers Advisers, half are aged over 50 and 17% are leaving in the next two years with very few coming into the sector according to a recent CDI survey.

It is ludicrous that the current statutory Guidance says every 16-year-old and 18-year-old should have had one career guidance interview by those ages as it cannot be delivered. We calculated that if every L6 Careers Adviser only worked with young people, we would still have a shortage annually of over a million Careers Advice hours to fulfil the statutory guidance!

For young people with SEND, Careers Advisers often lack knowledge or confidence to work with these young people.

A 50/50 funding model could be operated enabling schools to fund training for a member of their own staff which is now possible since the Statutory Guidance was published in 2018. Once the person qualifies, the Government pays a rebate of 50% of the cost. The DFE funds 100% of Careers Leader training after all. And they don’t have a statutory role currently.

We think the whole Careers Adviser model should be re-evaluated, it is not fit for purpose and when looking at the characteristics of Generation Z, they will need to be far more skilled with a much wider adoption of technology that goes way beyond a Zoom meeting. The whole role needs rebranding to attract a younger more challenging cohort that better reflects their client groups and is rewarded for delivering a more dynamic interface.