AEIAG0118
Form the Future CIC is a not for profit careers and employment company. We help children and young people find their route through education into employment, and provide employers access to their future talent. Specifically, we provide schools, colleges and other groups with a high-quality, outsourced CEIAG service at each stage of their young people’s development. We do this by placing local businesses in front of their future talent pipeline to showcase their employment opportunities, simultaneously contributing to companies’ CPD and CSR targets. By doing this we empower young people to explore their skills and interests, understand their future employment options, and make informed career decisions that are right for them.
We believe that our work is having a significant impact on young people in the areas where we work, but in order to deliver this we have had to find the funding from a range of sources, work hard to build up a network of employers and develop a team of careers professionals. The young people in the schools we work in have a huge advantage over their peers in neighboring areas. It’s completely a post-code lottery. While our ambition is to expand wherever there’s need, the reality is that schools cannot afford our services without us securing sponsorship or grants. We are fortunate that the area where we’re based, Cambridge, is a successful, dynamic local economy, where companies are able to contribute and our local authorities have negotiated funding for investment in skills as part of a city deal. Other areas may not be able to draw on support from their local employers or local authorities. It is a classic postcode lottery.
Since the end of the Connexions service in 2012, there’s been no consistent local offer for schools careers services. While the Careers & Enterprise Company has made a strong contribution, including providing some funding for local programmes, I know that at least one funding round – where we made it to the final stage, but were unsuccessful – was oversubscribed by a factor of 31. Since discontinuing their grant programme, they have concentrated on the Careers Advisor network, which attempts to impose a standard, centralised, single approach to supporting schools with their careers strategy and tapping into local employer support. We help to deliver this in our area, but we are quite clear that the Enterprise Advisor/Enterprise coordinator programme does not in itself address the needs of schools, students or local employers. In many schools, the careers lead is juggling a variety of additional jobs from Deputy heads, to heads of departments, to teaching responsibilities. I know of only 1 school out of about 40 with a dedicated careers leader. In practice, they may only have a couple of hours a week to focus on CEIAG. This is completely inadequate.
1. Whether the current system of careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG) is serving young people, particularly:
With regard to the cohorts listed above under question 1 particularly a, b, and e who through their experiences are likely to be particularly disadvantaged with regard to careers (where social connections and social skills confer massive advantages) inadequate careers provision is compounding a lack of social mobility. Just to clarify, their better off peers without additional needs will already have some resources to draw on in thinking about and preparing for their future careers. While not enough to keep pace with our dynamic labour market, without universal and targeted provision to reinforce those with additional needs, the gap will widen.
Careers provision in special schools is an area of concern. We’re aware that there is a lack of specialist skills in this area. We have sought to upskill our team of careers professionals so that we can better meet the needs of students in special schools or in mainstream with additional needs. The statistics around disabled adults gaining employment are shocking (6% of those who wish to have employment do so) and it’s essential that we improve the opportunities for the next generation. In some cases, educators who lack experience in the workplace have almost written off their students’ chances, not aware that there are opportunities where some of their strengths can be used to good effect. Not only that, but a career does not just mean paid work: it’s crucial that every young person is helped to understand their strengths and skills and given the chance to engage with their wider community in a way that makes sense for them. Imagine the careers leader trying to organise the whole careers programme for 1000 or so students in 2 hours a week, without a budget? To what extent are they going to be able to develop a meaningful, targeted, effective careers programme for their students with additional needs?
We know that the 14+ checks with the local authority for individuals with EHCPs will consider next steps. To what extent are local careers professionals, with strong local labour market knowledge and careers expertise, involved in this process? For students in alternative provision, including home educated students, the same question should be asked. Our view is: not enough. We’ve recently registered as a provider on the Alternative Provision database, but it will be down to individuals reaching out to us and requesting our support.
We started Form the Future CIC because students in the UK need to make choices about course choices from a very early age, often with no information or understanding about the long term consequences of these choices. The wrong choice at 13, 16 or 18 can close off opportunities, or require significant time, effort and cost to acquire the necessary qualifications for particular careers. We also know that there are strong cultural forces that influence children and young people about the careers that they feel they can choose, whether due to gender, socioeconomic status, cultural background or ability. Only by starting early, and working together regularly can we change these attitudes and build their confidence, curiosity and social/cultural/science capital to see themselves pursuing the full range of career opportunities. “You can’t be what you can’t see” is completely true. A fully integrated careers programme, with opportunities to meet a range of employers, to have experiences of work, to reflect on ones strengths, interests and values and to work with a professional advisor to join all of these experiences together to form a careers plan should be as much of an entitlement as free dental checks or learning to read.
We address the remaining questions below:
This appears to have been the aim of the Careers & Enterprise Company, but without the teeth or sufficient budget to do more than highlight good practice. There are also professional bodies, like the CDI, who should be involved.
It must sit within the Department for Education, if we can retain the little amount of time and attention of schools that we have at the moment. Ultimately, the headteacher or MAT CEO needs to believe in and support the value of careers education. Currently, Ofsted is the stick that we need to use to secure this support. The DWP would have no sway whatsoever with these key influencers.
Without understanding their full costs it’s impossible to comment. I’m sure NCS provision varies around the country, depending on which organisation secures the contract and the quality of the personnel locally. Not all schools use the NCS and the provision for 13+ is limited, and non-existent for younger years. Our own service begins in primary schools, so that we can build up students commitment to education and qualifications from the start, rather than trying to impose it just as they’re about to leave formal education.
We have developed elements of and are continuing to develop a comprehensive programme of careers education that integrates with the wider school curriculum, because we believe that this approach can be highly effective. It’s important to shift the schools’ focus away from exam results as the be all and end all and work with them to support and celebrate the many achievements their students will have throughout their time at school, achievements that will develop their personal strengths and qualities, as well as their motivation and ambition. Setting their learning and development in the context of preparing for the future lives is an altogether more ambitious aim than pursuing a set of good exam results.
We are running CPD sessions for all staff involved in the pastoral and transition arrangements for students, so that we can improve their skills and abilities to have career conversations with students. This includes helping them understand the full range of pathways, including technical and vocational routes into careers or further education.
I don’t know how it’s currently enforced to comment on how this could be improved.
Providing a budget that schools could apply for and register of approved providers would be a good start.
While we welcome elements of the plan such as employers’ input and a strengthened role for the long neglected and underfunded FE system, we think it’s going to take more than this to make CEIAG truly fit for the future. We have observed that some elements of the new skills programme, like the bootcamps, have been rushed out in ridiculously short timescales. For example, one provider begged us to help refer unemployed adults to a full-time 12 week course starting the following week as they needed to find another 300 in a few days. This is likely to result in people being referred onto a course they can’t complete – the opposite of what good CEIAG aims to achieve. While it’s vital to work with employers to anticipate future skills needs and ensure provision support these, it’s also important to work with students and learners themselves to make sure provision will be taken up. There’s also a major concern about colleges ability to attract and retain the best educators to ensure students really are achieving the essential skills that will improve their employment chances. The current wage gap between college and school teachers is a risk.
We believe greater investment to create a robust system of CEIAG is needed, and that it needs to be led by Matrix qualified providers, independent of schools and colleges, working in partnership with employers and educators, to fully integrate CEIAG into learning at all ages.