Oral evidence: Careers advice, information and guidance, HC 670Monday 8 February 2016
Oral evidence, 8 February 2016.
Witnesses
Dr Mary Bousted, General Secretary, Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Sian Carr, Vice President, Association of School and College Leaders, Martin Doel CBE, Chief Executive, Association of Colleges, and Marcus Mason, Head of Business, Education and Skills, British Chambers of Commerce, gave evidence. [Neil Carmichael in the Chair]
Chair
Hello. You have already witnessed three changes of Chair and it looks as though I am in for a while, because I am the one with three Members here. One of the fascinating things about the rules in the House of Commons is just how archaic some of them are, and I am pleased that is on record. As I have just been explaining to our two Clerks, we will be pressing the case for relaxation of the quorum rules, which have bedevilled this session so far. Would you mind just saying who you are and what you do, please?
Martin Doel
Martin Doel, Chief Executive, the Association of Colleges. The association represents the 330 further education and sixth-form colleges in England. Those colleges deliver approximately 50% of education to 16 to 18-year-olds; upwards of 35% of the apprenticeships delivered, so they are the apprenticeship providers for 35%; 10% of higher education. The predominance of the education within further education is what we would call “professional and technical routes” rather than the better known “academic route”.
Sian Carr
Sian Carr, Vice President of the Association of School and College Leaders. I do have a day job, though: I am Executive Principal at Skinners’ Kent Academy and Skinners’ Kent Primary School in Tunbridge Wells.
Marcus Mason
Marcus Mason, Head of Business Education and Skills at the British Chambers of Commerce. We represent 52 accredited chambers from across the UK, which collectively have a membership of around 80,000, which includes businesses as well as education providers. We have just over 2,000 education providers in the membership as well.
Dr Bousted
Mary Bousted. I am General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, so I represent teachers and lecturers working in schools at primary and secondary and in FE as well.
Chair
Let us kick off with the observation that Sir Michael Wilshaw made last month: “Careers guidance in schools and colleges is uniformly weak”. First, you might want to say whether that is something you agree with or not, and then tell us why it is so poor.
Dr Bousted
It is patchy. I agree with the previous witnesses to the Committee that it is far from what we would want it to be. There have been lots of things the previous witnesses have said that I agree with. One of the things that has not been said is, in schools, we are giving careers advice and guidance to children and young people who are going into a labour market that is much more fragmented and much more difficult to navigate than it was even 10 years ago; where the transitions between school and work are much less well worn; and where you have a lot more self‑employment, zero-hours contracts, globalisation, and proliferation of job types and careers. It has always been a tall order for schools to do careers education well, even in a more stable labour market. With the fragmentation of the labour market and the proliferation of skills you need in order to navigate it, it becomes more difficult. When that is added to, as the previous witnesses have said, the proliferation of careers advice providers, the proliferation of websites and no really clear, stable place where schools can go and get good advice about how to do this, it becomes a very difficult thing for schools to do. I will just say one more thing. The previous witnesses have talked about the jobs that schools have to do. If you look at the rate of change in schools in terms of curriculum change, qualification change, structural change, performance-related pay, etc, there is a veritable tsunami of policy initiatives on schools, and careers advice and guidance is struggling like a drowning man, trying to find some oxygen to breathe into what we can give young people.
Chair
Does anybody have anything to add to that?
Sian Carr
I ought to add something to that. I have been in the business rather a long time and so I would agree with Mary that it is patchy. One of the reasons why it is patchy is because we have been through so many different systems, so many variations on a theme. Sometimes we are supposed to be driving it, sometimes we are not to have anything to do with it, and sometimes we are meant to be doing something in between both of those things. That has not helped schools and school leaders to provide the quality in the guidance that is needed for our young people. That does not mean that we do not care about it and that we do not think it is important; we do. From my own experience, I have invested in a person who provides this whole area of leadership within my school, because I think it is so important that that happens.
Marcus Mason
It is not uniformly bad. We are having this discussion in the context of schools now being responsible for the provision of careers advice within their own institutions and, from what we can see in our membership, some schools have absolutely risen to the challenge and done a really good job at that. I would agree with this panel and the previous panel that it is patchy, and it has probably become patchier, from the information that we are receiving from businesses and schools across our membership. Ultimately, schools have, in some cases, struggled to connect with their local labour market whilst previously intermediary brokers were better placed, perhaps, to do that. It has, in some cases, been de-prioritised because of lack of funding and also per-pupil funding incentives, which drive a particular type of activity and not the provision of good, impartial careers advice.
Martin Doel
I agree with the previous speakers that the careers education information, advice and guidance—and I will come back to education information, just not talk about advice and guidance, later, if we have the opportunity—is broken. In terms of Sir Michael Wilshaw’s comments, like many things in that particular speech, I have no understanding at all where he had the evidence to make an assertion that careers advice in colleges was poor. There may be better and worse advocates of provision of careers advice within colleges but, as we heard from the previous speakers, being much closer to the labour market and seeing it as their core business and the requirement that all staff within colleges are required to be matrix standard accredited for careers advice, I just do not know where he found the evidence to make that assertion in relation to colleges.
Chair
So “patchy” is really what you are going to conclude with, particularly in schools. The British Chambers of Commerce also suggest that careers guidance is not being given sufficient priority in schools. We tested earlier, through one of the witnesses, the idea of Chambers being more robust, statutory or whatever in their relationship with schools. Does anybody have any comments on that thought?
Marcus Mason
This is a reference to international comparisons, for example, in Germany. There is a very different chamber of commerce system in Germany, where, essentially, all businesses are members. We have a voluntary system here, so it is a whole different territory. It would be very difficult to mandate chambers, which operate voluntarily in this country, to do anything, frankly. However, we are seeing chambers being more and more involved in voluntarily brokering and providing that support for their local schools and colleges. Due to their links to their local business community and to businesses that tend to be civic‑minded, have a strong sense of attachment to their local community, chambers are very well placed to act as a broker between those businesses and schools. That is something that we are aiming to encourage through a new type of membership that is on offer to schools and colleges, which is to become members of chambers and, as a result, get a range of services that help them connect to their local business community.
Chair
Martin, you suggested it should be mandatory for schools to work towards the Quality in Careers Standard. Do you think that would really make a difference?
Martin Doel
As discussed in the previous session, we need some clearer benchmarks on what “good” looks like within a school and, therefore, an ability for Ofsted and others to establish if they are fulfilling their remit most effectively there. I would also say, in the context of the recent announcement from the Secretary of State about providing access to young people to see apprenticeship providers as colleges and others and be aware of the wider routes is valuable as one part of that. I also think that the requirement for school sixth forms to be graded in the same manner or separately from the rest of the school will drive right behaviours here, as will destinations measures begin to drive some right behaviours. Investment in the Careers & Enterprise Company is valuable. What is perhaps missing from all of those individual elements is an overarching strategy. If you move back to the position within Germany—comparisons with Germany are always difficult to make because the economic model is so very different—what strikes me is that people in Germany have a clearer idea of their role within the system at any point, and there is more of a strategic design existing. We have almost a torrent of actions now in response to the fact that the careers education information, advice and guidance system is broken, rather than have a clear strategy to knit those all together in a pattern that is going to come up with something that will endure.
Chair
Obviously, the one point about Germany is it does have a strategy and there is that framework to provide that strategy and we, as a Committee, might want to look into that possibility here.
Dr Bousted
It is more than a strategy. Germany has a very clear idea of what an apprenticeship is and of apprenticeship standards. There has been a lot of talk about schools not recommending apprenticeships. There are a lot of apprenticeships at the moment that schools would not want to recommend. Ofsted has written very clearly about this—about apprenticeships that young people did not know they were on, sweeping the floor. I have a bit of local information for this session. I have been walking past a school every day for a year and there has been a young Afro-Caribbean man outside that school, in a high vis hat and so on, just sitting there. This morning, I said to him, “Can you tell me more about what you are doing?” He said, “I am on an apprenticeship.” I said, “What have you learnt?” He said, “Well, I have learnt how to sit out here very well.” It is funny, but it is not. That is a one-person thing this morning, but there is an issue here. Schools may well be reluctant to recommend apprenticeships in hospitality, catering and other areas until they can get an idea that the value and the worth of those apprenticeships will enable young people to get a job. Also, in our evidence, we have shown that it is not the case that young people of 16 and 17 don’t apply; it is that employers don’t put them on apprenticeships. You are far more likely to get an apprenticeship if you are already working for the company.
Chair
It is 5.30, so we have to keep our questions and answers short, but I am going to tempt fate by asking all of you what you think of the current measures in the Enterprise Bill in connection with apprenticeships, and particularly the idea of an institution.
Sian Carr
It is going to be very difficult for schools and it is linked with what Mary has just said: it is what kind of apprenticeships we are talking about. I was talking to a colleague from Manchester Metropolitan University at the weekend who was talking about degree apprenticeships, and that we could put members of our staff on those—teaching assistants and so on. I then began to think that that is a possibility. That is about growth and development of one’s staff, but creating jobs for apprenticeships and, if we don’t, being taxed on it in a very difficult financial situation is going to be problematic.
Martin Doel
Some welcome news is that every four years you can encapsulate those in a pattern of action, which reinforces each. I might pick up a point from Mary’s comments and the comment about types of apprenticeships. We experiment with things about every four years. The German apprenticeship system has changed twice since 1946. It is, therefore, a relatively easy one to navigate for young people and to understand. If we have some greater constancy of purpose for our apprenticeships, we are more likely to see high-quality apprenticeships and move forward in a measured way. In terms of 16 to 18-year-old choices, we sometimes present young people with a plethora of choices, which is confusing to me, let alone parents and the young people. Bringing this down to some clearer routes, ones that have a chance of staying around for more than five years, is more likely to result in a counterweight in the technical professional system to the academic system, which has been relatively unchanged for the last 20 years.
Chair
We will certainly look into the German system in some detail after that.
Marcus Mason
When it comes to current apprenticeship policy, when you combine the 3 million target with the apprenticeship levy, we are going to see a huge increase in businesses and employers offering apprenticeships. The challenge is going to be in the signposting of apprenticeships within schools. Schools, as we heard earlier with the sixth forms, have very little incentive to signpost directly to apprenticeships. We are going to have to crack that in order to make sure that we fill those apprenticeships.
Chair
That is a perfect signpost for Ian to get started on the careers guidance market.
Ian Mearns
Before I do, the whole range of answers have sparked a number of questions running in my mind. Marcus, you said that the system is not uniformly bad, yet you said it has become more patchy. “Patchy” is a mixture of good, bad, indifferent and somewhere in between. Does “more patchy” mean more bad or more just indifferent? We need to drill down into this. That is one thing. The other thing is about apprenticeships. Apprenticeships have to be quality-assured. They have to have a quality outcome for a young person, not just a rebadged or rebranded existing training regime, which might lead nowhere in terms of career development for a young person. How are we going to ensure that?
Marcus Mason
When it comes to the issue of patchy and bad, ultimately what we have seen is, because previously you had a uniform provider through the Connexions system, there was more consistency across the board. In some cases, of course, that was not very high quality, but at least there was some sort of provision pretty much delivered across the board. What we are finding, speaking to local schools and business now, is that in some cases schools are doing very little. In other cases, in schools where often the leadership is heavily invested in this agenda, we see exceptional provision delivered by the school and also in partnership with local providers. The provision is much more variable and that was my point about it being patchy.
Ian Mearns
You are highlighting there one of the dilemmas, I believe, of bums-on-seats funding regimes in whatever level of education. Due to the incentives that youngsters bring with them in financial package terms, be it pupil unit or whatever, sometimes you get the perverse incentive on behalf of an institution to say to a youngster, “We need you” for the good of the institution rather than for what potentially would happen in terms of improving that youngster. We have to get around that, because we are getting back to the situation that Malcolm Wicks described in the mid 1990s of some careers advice and guidance being dispensed in schools being akin to pensions mis-selling. That was the analogy that he used.
Martin Doel
Some of the actions that are being put in place now should be allowed to mature. One I am particularly taken with is a wider range of performance measures for schools post-16. One of the key ones is retention to complete the course commenced. There is a near-national scandal, probably, if you can have a national scandal just in London, where there is a 20% churn of young people at age 17 who start one course and then move on to another institution in order to complete another course in that wasted year. Having some penalties in the system for poor advice or for placing young people on the wrong course is one incentive. Destinations will be another, and having separate grades for school sixth forms from the rest of the school again will drive behaviour here. We need to see how those measures grip and what consequences they have; otherwise, we will be trying to change the machine even before those have had a chance to take effect.
Ian Mearns
ATL’s evidence is that outside agencies providing careers guidance can be hit and miss, and we have got a flavour of that from yourselves already. What more can be done to help schools and students navigate this complex market? What more can we do? Are there any quick wins or easy hits we can get?
Dr Bousted
In our view, we need more centralised guidance and more quality assurance of the careers advice that is available from the plethora of providers. We think the National Careers Service should have a specialist schools function, so that schools can get advice, guidance and some quality assurance on providers. The previous witnesses were saying that schools are closing their doors because there is a plethora of providers and they were talking about schools having a quality mark of careers providers. You cannot put the genie back in the box of just having one any more, but we do now have some agencies that go across the piece and someone or some agency needs to take responsibility for a kitemark of quality assurance of careers advice and guidance. That cannot just rely on a plethora of providers. One of the things I did at the weekend in preparation for this Committee was go on some careers guidance websites, and a lot of them are awful. They also require you to know what you want to do and to be able to know the name of what you want to do. If you don’t have that cultural capital, it is difficult to get past that initial thing. What young people tell us is, “We want face-to-face careers advice and guidance.” The more disadvantaged you are and the less social capital you have in terms of friends and family who can get you into law and into medicine and all those places, the more you need that individual advice and guidance. You need it, as the previous witness said, from a trusted, but I would also say informed, professional.
Ian Mearns
What you are really saying is that there should be a minimum entitlement across the piece.
Dr Bousted
Yes.
Sian Carr
I would agree with that. That is why we invested in a person, because they are a trusted, known person. We can continue those relationships and we continue them even after they have left us, wherever they have gone.
Dr Bousted
Some of our members say that the person who gets lumbered with careers advice and guidance is the person who has got periods to make up on their timetable. That is what we are being told, so we cannot ignore the patchiness of this.
Martin Doel
In relation to the need to improve advice and guidance, I would agree it does need to be increased, but not at the expense of careers education. It seems to me the answer to the previous question was to have those young people asking better questions of the website and being more able to self-determine in relation to seeking the advice and the information they require. That is a product of education throughout the curriculum, at particular times and different stages of their primary school career, their secondary school career, but in a systematic way that builds their understanding of the world of work and the options that might be before them.
Ian Mearns
Is there not a problem, though, that if youngsters get access to careers education advice and guidance at all it tends to be towards the end of Key Stage 4 and the trouble is that they are already down an academic path, because they are doing their options for the GCSE courses they are going on to in Key Stage 3?
Martin Doel
Can I give an example? I don’t know the international examples as well as some of the previous panellists, but I am reasonably aware of the Swiss one. Careers education information at particular stages of a child’s development through the school is mandated upon the school to provide. That information comes from industry against an agreed format and is updated every year by industry in order to present the pathways into their industry at an age-appropriate level for the young people throughout. You get a greater pattern of provision here rather than just depending on how good the individual careers adviser is at one school and how up-to-date they might be.
Ian Mearns
Sian, you recommended the introduction of a national framework to overcome variations in cost and quality. What would a framework look like from your perspective?
Sian Carr
It is about setting out those benchmarks and ingredients that have already been spoken about when one is looking for that impartial advice and guidance. I absolutely agree with Martin. Careers education is absolutely vital from 4 to 19, from my perspective, but when you are looking to tap into that impartial advice and guidance, because there is such a plethora, you have to understand there is a quality about it and a national framework would provide that. That is why we are suggesting it.
Ian Mearns
The careers industry used to have the matrix standard. I do not know whether it still exists.
Sian Carr
We are not suggesting maybe producing something new, but—
Ian Mearns
It was never meant for individual schools, though. It was meant to be for broader careers education and advice and guidance providers, so how could that work for schools?
Sian Carr
I am not sure whether it could work for schools. We are looking at it from the perspective of those services that we might want to purchase or to buy in; we need to have that quality assurance. Whether there is something that can be a bridge between that and what we might need to benchmark for ourselves in schools in order that our provision is equal and provides equity for students is worth considering as well.
Ian Mearns
Should the National Careers Service be giving schools and colleges more support in the delivery of careers guidance?
Dr Bousted
Yes.
Martin Doel
Anything more is helpful, so yes. I would also, though, say that the information from the labour market intelligence should be fused with the National Careers Service and I share the concern of the previous speakers about the loss of the UK commission as a source of information. You asked a question earlier about the Institute for Apprenticeships; I would be interested to see how that particular aspect of their work transfers into the Institute for Apprenticeships or elsewhere.
Marcus Mason
We also need to make sure that the National Careers Service does not overlap too much with the Careers & Enterprise Company.
Chair
A very good point; thank you. We are going to move up a gear. Stephen is going to show us how fast we can go by tackling both vocational routes and career education in a curriculum.
Stephen Timms
First, to Martin, from a college’s perspective, what do you think should be done to raise the awareness of vocational opportunities?
Martin Doel
Without concentrating too much on the lexicon, I would stop using the term “vocation”, which has, I am afraid, become a damaged word, and start using the words “technical and professional”, which have a degree of greater aspiration and direction around them. Also, it is important, as we have been discussing, to simplify to some degree, if not the content, the routes to build them. Particularly for 16 to 18-year-olds, not to require them to specialise too soon, but give them a broad experience and move them towards an industry rather than prepare them precisely for one industry. Think in terms of age 19 being the stepping off point normally for an apprenticeship, so you begin to fashion a set of routes that are clearer to navigate but still don’t tie down a young person’s options unduly. You are then moving closer to greater awareness here. Sometimes, particularly for parents who are guiding their children, it looks confusing and you have to sit down with somebody to take you through it. Once you have to have somebody who is going to sit you down and take you through it, for a 16-to-18, you have lost them and you default to the A-levels route, which they might drop out from at 17, rather than going for the alternative route. We have to make it simpler, clearer and we have to have a constancy of purpose and not mess around with it every five years. We then have a chance of having greater awareness.
Stephen Timms
It is not just a communications problem.
Martin Doel
No, there is a substance issue about how you group together these groups of activities and how you build an educative programme between 16 and 18. It is both this Government and the previous Government; it is not a party matter because it went in this direction with diplomas, then through to, now, programmes of study. We need to build on that direction of travel, particularly for young people.
Stephen Timms
Marcus, could I put a point to you? There is a suggestion that employers are choosing older people as apprentices because it is cheaper and easier for them. Do you think that is right—older rather than 16 or 17 year olds?
Marcus Mason
Certainly the growth in apprenticeships in recent years has been older people undertaking those apprenticeships. It is not necessarily cheaper. Traditionally, the training for younger apprentices has been much better, with a subsidised apprenticeship wage. Most businesses do not pay as low as the apprenticeship wage, but for younger people that is much lower as well. Businesses are quite open and receptive to hiring younger apprentices. In fact, for the average businessperson, particularly the SMEs that we speak to every day, their intuitive idea of what it means to be an apprentice they associate with being younger. However, it is finding the right people at that age, and it comes back to the point about schools not appropriately signposting these types of opportunities. Sometimes you have businesses going out and advertising apprenticeships in the 16-to-18 or up-to-24 age groups and really struggling to get enough applicants for those types of opportunities.
Dr Bousted
Although the figures do not map that out. At ATL, we did some work on this in preparation for this Committee. 50% of registrants on Apprenticeship Vacancies’ online system were under 19 years of age, but only 6% of 16 to 17-year-olds were on apprenticeships. This narrative that schools are not talking about them and are not telling people, if there are 16 and 17-year-olds and they have that percentage on the system applying and only 6% being appointed, there is an issue there. I am afraid, to be blunt, there is an issue with employers taking apprenticeship training money and training people in jobs they are already doing and double-counting for that. There is also the issue that 47% of employers in 2014 did not provide any training at all. We should not just load all this on to schools and not get employers to take their responsibilities. There is an issue about employers being willing to give young people a start in the labour market. The figures are undeniable; we spent quite a lot of time finding them out.
Stephen Timms
Can I just pick that point up with Sian, because there is an obvious financial incentive for schools to keep young people in to the sixth form and that may be one of the things that is going on? Do you think we would find evidence of bias in careers advice for that reason?
Sian Carr
I find this quite difficult, because I don’t take that stance as a head teacher. I want the best route for a young person and, in Kent, if one of my students wants to go to a grammar school, for example, to do sixth form, that is where they go. If they want to go to college, that is where they go. We definitely support apprenticeships, and have done. I would back Mary up on what she has just said. Their experience has not been all positive; I will put it as simply as that. I understand that if you have a large sixth form, particularly with the way in which it is now funded, which has been alluded to, there are significant issues potentially with bias in that advice. I suppose I would like to be optimistic about school leaders and the way in which they might manage that. Talking from a personal perspective, I certainly would not do it.
Martin Doel
I have three points on apprenticeships and recruitment for 16-year-olds. I am not arguing with Mary’s point entirely, but sometimes schools are most likely to promote the apprenticeship route to some of the least able students at that stage—those who are the most unlikely to be attractive to an employer at age 16 for a high-quality apprenticeship, so there is a little bit of cause and effect in that regard. Secondly, as a proposition, most of the employers I talk to are more likely to take a 19-year-old as a more fully formed adult and, therefore, somebody who is less risk in the workplace than a 16-year-old, who has still to be formed over the period of an apprenticeship. I am also concerned to see that, for a 16 to 18-year-old, the apprenticeship is sufficiently broad to fit that young person for a whole life of work rather than just the apprenticeship that they are training within. I am generally much more comfortable in acknowledging that 19 is a better stepping-off point for most young people for an apprenticeship. I know that some colleges do very well at recruiting 16-year-olds to apprenticeships, but that tends to be in particular sectors rather than in the full range of apprenticeships.
Marcus Mason
Just to come back on a couple of those points, I think, Mary, you are right that in some areas businesses can do more. For example, one of the most obvious areas is when it comes to providing work experience. We ask businesses, “What do you think young people are lacking? What is the most important thing for them to have before going into a job to prepare them?” and they say, “Work experience,” but most of them do not offer work experience. That is an obvious example where businesses can do more. I have to disagree on the apprenticeship point, though. Of course there are huge numbers of young people signing up to the apprenticeship website. That is partly driven by more and more schools and, in particular, colleges having a blanket policy, more so in colleges than schools, of signing up all of their pupils to that. I am not surprised that a high number of people have signed up. Whether they are actively applying for things is a different matter. Chambers of commerce are currently delivering 250 “Your Future Careers” events across the country and receiving a lot of feedback from that delivery. In a minority of cases, you have schools that, as soon as they find out that apprenticeships are being promoted at a careers event, decide not to turn up. They decide not to send their pupils or decide to send a very small minority of their pupils and, similar to what Martin was saying, perhaps they are the less able ones. The responsibility, of course, lies on both sides.
Stephen Timms
On the question of how careers advice and education ought to be provided, there is some suggestion it should be embedded in the curriculum. Do you think that is right? Is it realistic that that could happen?
Sian Carr
It is entirely realistic. We are all in the throes of rethinking our curriculum from 4 to 19 as a result of the curriculum reforms and the qualifications, so it is an opportune time to consider the ways in which one threads a number of required themes: the emphasis on the education of careers and an understanding of the world of work and what the range of opportunities are. I would absolutely agree with Martin about that sense of a pathway or set of pathways, which are really clear, that you could set out. From a very early age you are engaging. I have just opened a primary school where we had the police in and it was part of a topic, but that would have computed with them. They would have thought about it. They would have thought about that as an opportunity. It is never too young an age to thread that through, so that when they are beginning to make some choices and thinking about what they might want to do, they keep all their options open, they choose their curriculum to meet an array of those options, and they don’t close down doors. They keep all those doors open.
Stephen Timms
Could I just ask you a question about Tunbridge Wells? In your area, how many different institutions are involved in careers advice and education at the moment?
Sian Carr
Off the top of my head I would not like to say, but it is varied and a significant number, I would say, and it is difficult to work with them all. We work very closely, interestingly, with our chamber of commerce and we find that very useful, as we do with local employers, as a way of tapping into the variety and they are very good. When you create a relationship with a local employer, as we have with AXA PPP, it is fantastic. They can offer you an array of not just work experience but they come in and do “Dragons’ Den”—all of those kinds of things that are possibilities.
Stephen Timms
Can I ask the others: is embedding in the curriculum the right way forward on this?
Dr Bousted
It is really interesting. There has been a lot of work on this and I was reading some research at the weekend. Andreas Schleicher from the OECD said that schools need to stop preparing young people for the jobs that were created a generation ago and start preparing them for the jobs that do not exist. He was talking about, for example, if you are doing maths, good maths education will look at probability; it will look at chance; it will look at how to read a spreadsheet effectively. Good English will look at how you present a case, how you speak effectively and clearly, and why that is important. How do you present yourself for an interview? How do you make an argument? The concrete outcomes of what you study in school should be made explicit to children and young people, and too often they are not. We are moving into a system in schools, particularly with the qualification reform and the changes in the curriculum, where schools are being too often encouraged to see knowledge as an end in itself. That would be okay for a minority of young people, but lots of young people need to see the practical application of knowledge and how it will serve them in their adult life. That is beyond careers advice and guidance; that is careers education and the OECD says very clearly that it should be embedded in the curriculum.
Martin Doel
I do absolutely believe it should be woven in and we need to get a lot more sophisticated. I speak of an area in which I am not an expert, because I am not a schoolteacher, but more sophisticated in how we put the curriculum together to weave various elements together. For me, this touches on the character agenda as well as the agenda around careers education. It fits young people best for their future lives beyond the education system. Ministers and agencies all like to have individual initiatives to try to change things, but I go back to my first point: those individual initiatives need to be put in with an overall pattern so that they reinforce one another rather than working against one another; otherwise, we have a stop-go type system that never gets a grip and moves it forward. I absolutely think it needs to be embedded in the curriculum. We must have a much more sophisticated approach to building that curriculum. At the same time, trying to measure particular outputs through it as well. We just need to get a bit more joined up about this rather than reacting and saying, “The careers system is broken. Now we will do this, this and this and that will put it right.” It will not. We just need to take a much broader view and embed it.
Chair
Those last few exchanges are relevant also to our inquiry on the purpose of education, which picks up the points that Martin, Mary and Sian have made, so thank you. What we are going to talk about now is the engagement between schools and employers. I just want to tease out some of the additional barriers that you see. You have mentioned one or two already, but what do you think are the main barriers that prevent effective engagement between schools and employers?
Sian Carr
My experience has always been that there is not a lack of willingness on either side and it would be wrong to say that; it is probably time. People lead busy lives in both sectors. I do understand that. I have invested in somebody to provide the time on our side and it is working very effectively, because that person has the time to go out and meet with those people and to begin to build those relationships. Where an employer has done the same and those two people can meet, you get a great deal of richness out of it. There are ways to do it. If there was a sense of that greater clarity and consistency of pathways and connecting pieces and there was an understanding that it was to be woven through the curriculum and not just about jobs and the workplace and so on, it would be really helpful.
Martin Doel
I am not speaking about schools so much here, but am just reflecting on the fact that we have the same problem in colleges when we talk about the skills system and it being employer-led, employer-owned and employer-involved. We need to think much better about what is the right time and the right way to involve employers and what reasonably we can expect of employers, rather than asking them at certain points to do it all. Sometimes, from policy documents, you would think the only thing an employer exists to do is service the education system. It is not their raison d’être, so think about at what point and in what way they can add to the business of colleges and they can add to the business of schools and build a system that is sustainable. Again, I link back to the Institute for Apprenticeships. We need to think about what is reasonable to ask the employers to contribute to the Institute for Apprenticeships and what uniquely they bring to it. They do not exist to run the apprenticeship system. They might oversee it and advise it, so we need to think about how to involve employers to make it sustainable. I do like the idea of careers hubs, as in your own constituency. The college holds the ring there, between the employers and the schools, and I would obviously say it is a useful thing to have that intermediary in place. The Careers & Enterprise Company talking about having some local hubs where someone takes the lead to integrate and bring people together is a valuable way to do it. Sometimes it will be the chamber, sometimes a college, sometimes a LEP, but to have that local leadership will enhance the interaction.
Chair
ASCL are talking about the concerns that a lot of people have in connection with the sheer number of SMEs, small businesses in particular, and the complexity of working with those small businesses. Of course, we know the profile of business size in this country leans towards small rather than large. Does anybody have any thoughts on how that might be overcome other than, obviously, making small firms bigger?
Marcus Mason
We asked our members what the main barriers are. Our members are primarily SMEs, and it was staff time, cost and admin. When we asked the schools in membership as well, there was a similar response. Perhaps where businesses can do more is they mentioned that in some businesses there was a perceived lack of interest, so there might be a PR job to do there. Ultimately, a lot of businesses need hand-holding, but SMEs in particular need that broker to help make sure that their interaction with the school is as productive as possible. What we find is that often when SMEs try to engage directly with schools, they come up against so many different administrative burdens and they run on different timetables and they work in very different ways, so having that high-quality broker is absolutely crucial to that. In terms of how education providers come together, the more clustering you can have of education providers that bring different elements—colleges, training providers, schools—if they can come together and then, as a cluster, as it were, engage with business, you can get a lot more out of that, because a business can then engage with whichever relevant institution is right for them.
Chair
Thank you. Alison Wolf does not agree with you when you are talking about a blanket requirement to give Key Stage 4 pupils work experience. She thinks that has, as she puts it, served its time. You want to reintroduce it or see it happen. Is that the best use of resources if they are scarce, as they are?
Marcus Mason
I agree with a lot of what Alison Wolf thinks, but on that point, we have seen that work experience has fallen by the wayside at pre-16. Within the context of young people thinking about their careers, what better way than to experience work for a week or so and see it in practice? That is absolutely crucial and can also help break down certain preconceptions about particular careers.
Chair
You would like to see more businesses provide those opportunities and other organisations as well.
Marcus Mason
Yes, more schools and businesses, of course, providing that.
Chair
Martin, I am going to ask you a specific question that I know you want to talk about. We would like to know about your thoughts that employers should be carefully prepared before working with young people. What should that preparation look like?
Martin Doel
I don’t know that employers should be carefully prepared to work with colleges or schools. I think colleges and schools should be carefully prepared to work with employers and provide the advice necessary in order to equip employers to offer the best experience and one that adds. It connects back to the work experience point, if you are going to have work experience at earlier ages. Alison is challenging what was. We need to think about what that work experience, if it occurs between 14 and 16, is for, and I think it is different from what work experience between 16 and 18 is for. Therefore, employers need to be briefed differently, prepared differently, supported differently if they are going to do work experience at earlier ages rather than later ages. In terms of the nature of work experience, you need to think how, and then the institutions need to think about how they support the young person and the employer to have the best experience.
Ian Mearns
How far should careers advice be given to young people based on local job markets, because around the country it is very different? The job market in Tyneside is very different from what it is even in Sunderland, never mind Teesside or Durham or Northumberland, so how far should we go in terms of basing our advice to young people on the local job situation?
Dr Bousted
You do need to be aware of the local job situation, but it should not constrain the advice you give to young people. They have to know what is available beyond their local labour market, particularly because the local labour market can change. If you look at apprenticeships in London and the south-east and apprenticeships in the north, London and the south-east are in communications, they are in technical areas, whereas in the north it is much more in manufacturing. It is already the case that in certain areas the advice is more locally based, but you have to have a national perspective on that, because young people will be mobile and they cannot always just be constrained by what is available to them in their local area.
Martin Doel
That is right, but you can also see it as a narrowing triangle. For the younger ages it needs to be pretty wide; there should be some consciousness of the local labour market, but it is not the driving factor. When you get to 21, if somebody is staying on at college for the next two years, it needs to be much more narrowly focused on what the job opportunities are locally. It narrows with age and the relevance becomes more person-orientated.
Ian Mearns
The way I am trying to pick it up from the evidence we have heard from you this afternoon is that it should be part of the careers education aspect rather than the advice and guidance aspect.
Dr Bousted
Yes.
Chair
Last but not least, does each one of you have a really bright idea to help this cause?
Martin Doel
Knit together everything you are currently doing and keep it simple, stupid, and you will get some direction.
Sian Carr
Sustainable. Don’t keep changing it.
Marcus Mason
Set some sharp incentives for schools by holding them to account on the destination outcomes of their pupils.
Dr Bousted
Don’t give Ofsted the responsibility to inspect it, because they will do it badly.
Chair
On that note, thank you all very much for a pacey exchange. Thank you. Oral evidence: Careers advice, information and guidance, HC 670 27