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Written evidence submitted by Prospects Services

Prospects Services - entirely-owned by its employees – is a dynamic values-driven enterprise providing a wide range of education, employment and skills services to children, young people and adults in the UK and abroad. Currently we employ 1,400 professional people with an annual turnover of £80 million a year, providing services to some 500,000 individuals each year.

We are the prime contractor for three National Careers Service contracts in Greater London, West Midlands and the South West providing careers advice to over 200,000 adults each year and achieving real outcomes for many including for our ‘In Custody’ customers across thirty six prisons. For the National Careers Service we broker inspiration contacts between young people and employers through schools. For local government we provide targeted careers support in terms of NEETs and those young people with special educational needs as well as capability building within schools, notably through an accredited quality award in career education. We also bring employers, adults and young people together through thirteen annually held skills and job fairs across the UK attracting 100,000 visitors and involving over 700 exhibitors.

More widely we are a prime contractor on the Work Programme in the South West and a large subcontractor in London, we inspect early years’ providers on behalf of Ofsted and provide education for young people within the Feltham Young Offenders Institution. In local government, we provide a range of youth and social care services and support councils in developing their early years’ services. In Wales we deliver innovative activities to increase awareness of entrepreneurship in primary and secondary schools across the devolved administration, and in England we are a contractor on the National Citizens Service.

We welcome the establishment of the new Committee and the opportunity to contribute its first inquiry. We are willing to provide further assistance whether this is through arranging field visits for Committee members to our operations, providing further oral evidence or in any other way.

The role of careers advice

1. The needs of young people and their parents, and employers must be central to the policy and delivery framework for careers information, advice and guidance. Independent and professional careers advice is there to complement the role of teachers, parents and employers in supporting young people to make sound choices about their future in order to reach their potential.

2. We believe that independent careers advice can raise the aspirations and attainment of young people leading to positive individual outcomes (apprenticeships, further and higher education or employment etc.) which can lead to wider social outcomes in terms of social mobility, reduced offending and local economic growth and prosperity. There is a clear social and economic purpose to improving careers provision, including young people’s experience of the world of work[1]. For example, many young people and indeed their families have very internalised ideas about what ‘people like them’ can do in terms of education and careers. Careers education and guidance can help tackle those assumptions – what is appropriate for girls and boys, black or white, rich or poor. To do that young people need to be provided with a clear line of sight to work and a strong career pathway. And that’s why careers’ advice and guidance is most effective when it is delivered in partnership with schools, parents, and employers.

Where are we, and why is careers advice important?

3. There is a broad consensus that careers support for young people is not working as well as it could. For example, four out of five employers believe the quality of careers advice for young people is not good enough[2]. Yet effective careers advice has never been so badly needed as now:

        Young people need reliable, impartial, high-quality guidance to navigate the complex employment and education routes open to them - as do their parents.

        While employers need that guidance to be given in a way which reinforces some of the messages they are keen to convey to young people about being prepared for the world of work.

        And, further and higher education institutions are concerned that young people make the right choices, particularly on subjects, in order to prevent problems occurring down the line.

4. Our sense of where we are is that:

        The landscape of training and qualifications is becoming increasingly complex, with academic and vocational pathways becoming blurred, with differing institutional settings offering both.

        While weighing up the costs and benefits of further and higher education and the apprenticeship route has become difficult for many young people, and can have lasting consequences if the wrong decision is taken.

        Even entry into the work of work has become complex, many jobs today’s young people go into, did not exist when their parents left school.

        While the complex pattern of work experience, internships, apprenticeships and freelancing, alongside part and full-time roles, is difficult to comprehend, especially as these mean different things, in different sectors of the labour market.

        While there are many good examples of local initiatives and best practice at schools and local level this is, however, the exception rather than the norm.

        Where there is good careers guidance in schools, it has the explicit backing of the head teacher, and the governors and a whole-school approach has been taken.

5. The absence of a comprehensive and effective careers’ advice and guidance for young people is showing itself, in a number of ways:

        The persistent skills shortages which are preventing businesses from securing the skilled people they need, which is causing a drag on the country’s productivity:

• Skill shortages increased by 60% between 2011 and 2013, and affecting one in five vacancies[3].
• Over half of businesses (55%) that responded to the CBI/Pearson’s 2015 skill survey are not confident there will be enough people available in the future with the necessary skills to fill their high-skilled jobs[4].

        A majority of businesses remain concerned about the preparation of school leavers in important areas including business and customer awareness and self-management, teamwork and communication skills[5].

        While there has been real progress in reducing the number of young people not in education, employment and training (NEET), this has been driven in the main by raising the participation age and still leaves one in eight of young people (in the UK) as NEET, while many others are in low-paid jobs not fulfilling their potential.

        Across England 178,000 16-to-18 year-olds failed to complete the post-16 qualifications they started in 2012-13, putting them at risk of becoming NEET and amounting to a cost to the public purse of £814 million – 12% of all government spending on post-16 education and skills[6].

6. Nonetheless, a schools-based careers model can be made to work if we can effectively and efficiently address some of the weaknesses in the model, namely:

        poor links with the labour market and employers;

        inconsistency in the availability and quality of careers education, information and advice on offer to young people within school;

        the limited incentives on schools to make career education a priority;

        the weak national support given to schools to strengthen their capability; and,

        the missed opportunities to link schools careers provision with the devolution, local economic growth and skills agendas.

What we would like to see from the government’s Careers Strategy

7. We welcome the recent renewed interest being recently taken by the Department for Education in the careers guidance available to young people, and its forthcoming plan to publish a comprehensive careers strategy. We would like to see that strategy written not only from the perspective of the Department for Education, but also from the Departments for Business, Innovation and Skills and Work and Pensions. It does appear at times that the three departments (and their agencies) are taking, what can be perceived as, uncoordinated actions in a crowded and under resourced field. It also makes for a confused and complex landscape with a multiplicity of different initiatives, which are overlapping, and have unclear relationships. There is the National Careers Services with an Inspirations Agenda as part of its remit brokering links between schools and employers, the Careers and Enterprise Company, local government and its statutory responsibilities for providing targeted support for NEETs and then there is the recent introduction of Jobcentre Plus advisors into schools to “supplement careers advice and provide routes into work experience and apprenticeships”[7].

8. No one organisation is able to respond to the needs of a diverse schools sector, the differing needs of pupils with different range of abilities and social backgrounds. But as the Education Minister, Sam Gyimah acknowledged himself[8] “the careers ecosystem is complex, and, at present, careers provision is not working as well as it should.” But while we agree with him that a period of consistency and stability will have a greater impact than major structural reform we still would encourage the government to move beyond general statements about working together and take some relatively simple steps to carve out distinct roles for a number of players and set out how they see different parts of the system should work together. 

9. Given the finite amount of resources available to central government it is vital that the strategy makes better use of the common infrastructure developed under the National Careers Service (NCS). For while school autonomy has advantages, schools would benefit from greater central support. This might involve extending its online services, including providing web-chat, better local market information, disseminating good practice to schools, and/or expanding the work it is already doing through its Inspiration Agenda to broker contacts between young people and employers. (Across the three regions we operate, the South West, London and the West Midlands, and since October 2014, the Inspiration Agenda has delivered 186 inspirational activities with 234 employers, interacted with 25,709 young people during activities and engaged with 758 educational establishments and established relationships with 1,255 employers. Among the employers we have actively work with includes Royal Bank of Scotland, National Express, BMW, Costa Coffee, Morrison, Carillion, KPMG and Network Rail.)

10. While we agree with the widespread consensus that young people need inspiration as much as advice and that this is most likely to come from direct contact with the world of work, we are concerned that to get that message across the government appears to be downplaying the role that careers professionals are playing, and can play in the future. The role of those professionals and employer interactions with schools (and colleges) should be complimentary - but they do need to link up better. For while the number of businesses who have links with schools and colleges has been increasing there is scope to extend and deepen business involvement still further, including as school governors. However, many schools have limited capacity to engage and businesses also are also constrained to support this agenda; resulting in a patchy picture of schools-employer engagement. Therefore brokerage is essential in order to bridge these gaps and if we are to find ways in ensuring that no young person should reach 16 without having had some exposure to the world of work.

11. It is our experience and our belief that despite the patchiness of current services for young people a schools-based model can be made to work. But if that is to be universally true then careers education and guidance must be seen by governing bodies, head teachers and their teaching staff as crucial and an essential element of school life, not merely a bolt on. The biggest challenge for Education Ministers and for the strategy is to impress upon schools that they are under a ‘moral duty’ to appropriately prepare their pupils for the future.

12. There is widespread consensus on the components that make up an effective schools-based model of careers advice, many of which can be found in the eight benchmarks for providing good careers guidance as set out in the Gatsby Foundation Report[9]. In order to strengthen the accountability around the schools duty we would recommend that the statutory guidance on careers:

        Is explicitly re-oriented around these benchmarks including encouraging schools to develop, publish and regularly review a comprehensive careers policy and to appoint a dedicated governor to lead on this work.

        Recommends to schools that they should publish extended destinations data showing education, apprenticeship, training and employment destinations, and in a (comparative) way that can published as part of comparative school league tables.

13. However, an effective schools-based model should also include using the curriculum so that regular connections are made between academic subjects and the world of work. (Including at primary level in order to intervene early in the development of a child’s identity so that they do not merely gravitate towards stereotypical careers associated with their gender, ethnicity and social group). For this to consistently happen will require incorporating careers-related learning into the content of the National Programmes of study when they are next revised and then followed through into initial teacher training and continued professional development. In the meantime, we would suggest that the Departments for Education and for Business, Innovation and Skills work with some of our leading employers and others to develop careers related resources for subject teachers. Whilst ensuring that the outcome of the current Department for Education review of Personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education recognises that careers activities, experience of the world of work and activities that promote entrepreneurship should be taken forward as part of PSHE.

14. Careers advice and activities, including high quality work experiences with employers, has an enormous contribution to make on social mobility, something which has been recognised by Alan Millburn and his Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission[10]. But despite this the Pupil Premium policy makes little link between the two. Indeed, the government funded Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) teaching and learning toolkit[11] which assesses the cost and impact of different interventions to support effective spending of the premium, makes no mention of careers. Though we warmly welcome recent moves by EEF and the Sutton Trust to review available literature on the evidence between careers guidance and the outcomes for disadvantaged pupils[12]. Nonetheless, more can done to follow this through, including sending a clear message that there is a strong case for directing pupil premium funds to making improvements to career advice and inspiration activities with employers.

15. One way a ‘whole school approach’ to improving careers education is being driven is through quality award accreditation. Prospects are one of a number providers who deliver such awards which follow The Quality in Careers Standard[13]. The Government since March 2015 recommends that all schools should work towards a quality award for careers education, information, advice and guidance as an effective means of carrying out a self-review and evaluation of the school’s programme[14]. The Gatsby Foundation survey[15] found a statistical relationship associated with schools with an ‘Outstanding’ grading by Ofsted and schools with a career quality award, and that 38% of schools with such a quality mark are also graded as ‘Outstanding’. This link maybe not be entirely a causal relationship, however, we have observed schools that have been awarded a quality mark and subsequently go onto improve their Ofsted grading. And as the Gatsby survey found many schools with quality awards are significantly more likely to demonstrate fidelity with many of their eight benchmarks. However while there has been greater engagement by schools since the government’s advice was changed last year, less than a third (28%) of secondary schools and only 14% of further education and sixth form colleges in England hold an award or are working towards one[16].

16. The quality of schools careers provision can also be strengthened by schools and colleges working together through ‘careers clusters’ to: share resources in improving awareness of the local labour market; providing for peer-to-peer support in developing a whole-school approach to planning and delivering careers provision; and by jointly commissioning external expertise, making this more economically viable for individual schools. This can brokered by local authorities, working through their own responsibilities for providing targeted support for NEETs. But there is no reason why in the new schools landscape this could not also be facilitated through multi-academy trusts and by existing school improvement clusters.

17. Finally, we see that there is a real opportunity in explicitly linking the careers agenda for young people with that being pursued by government on local economic growth and skills through the local government devolution agenda. However, the Department for Education appear to be a reluctant participant of that policy. Consequentially they are not exploiting the opportunities which exist to provide for stronger local leadership for the careers agenda for young people and it local growth plans, and lever in new sources of local and European funding including through the European Social Fund.

18. In London, for example, where those links have been made we have seen the London Ambition Careers Offer that every young Londoner should be entitled to experience during their school and/or college years including at least 100 hours of experience of the world of work (by the age of 16) which has capture the imagination of young people, parents, teachers and employers. It is comprehensive, locally designed and driven, and in many ways is being achieved despite national initiatives and the shortcomings in government policy[17].

19. This does not require enormous sum of funding from central government, if any at all, rather it requires national leadership to awaken and encourage a renewed interest in careers advice and guidance in local government, and city regions through the newly formed combined authorities, some of whom for example across the ‘Midlands Engine’[18] - like Greater London - share the Committee’s own understanding that there is a strong link between national productivity, local economic growth, skills development and careers advice and inspirations activity for young people.

January 2016