Careers Advice
Careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG)
With almost one in five 16 to 24 year olds unemployed, and rising, it has never been more important that all young people are prepared with the knowledge, skills and support to help them to navigate the increasingly uncertain and difficult terrain that they face to ensure that they progress successfully beyond school into further learning or work. CEIAG is vital to ensure that they have this knowledge, skills and support.
What is CEIAG?
It is made up of different components which are complementary. IAG supports young people at key transition points in their lives by helping them to make decisions about their future.
Information - on all of the progression routes and opportunities open to them in learning or work. It also includes information on financial support and personal issues. It comes from a wide range of formal and informal sources some of which are accurate and impartial while others are not.
Advice and guidance - help young people to make sense of information and apply it to their own situation. It is not about making decisions on their behalf but is a vital part of supporting them to make informed decisions for themselves. It also helps them manage their transition from one stage to the next.
Careers education - is vital to enable young people to use IAG effectively. It helps them to develop their career ideas over time and ensure that guidance is not just a 'one off event'. Its aims are:
Self-development - analysing personal strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes and employability skills and developing all of these aspects in relation to their career ideas.
Career exploration - investigating choices and opportunities in learning , trends in different work sectors and modern working practices and workplaces.
Career management - self-presentation, applications, decision-making, action-planning and considering financial implications related to decisions in learning and work.
So, CEIAG is clearly a lot more than just matching young people to a job, and in fact if that were the case, it would not be fully preparing them for a 21st century labour market which is increasingly complex and in which a 'job for life' is no longer a valid concept, which means that young people will need to draw on the skills and knowledge gained from careers education time and time again in their adult lives.
Role of secondary schools
Secondary schools currently have a duty to provide careers education between the ages of 11 and 16. Most continue this into post-16 learning and some start in primary school, although the latter is more likely to be 'career-related learning' which is more generally about the world of work and less focused on the individual. Whenever it begins, and the earlier the better, it is vital to helping raise young people's aspirations and to challenging stereotypical career ideas which can lock them into traditional roles and routes that do not make the best use of their interests or talents.
Employers' contribution to CEIAG
Employers can make an important contribution to careers education programmes by helping young people ground their career ideas within the realistic context of the needs of employers today and of the opportunities that are actually available. There are many ideas of how employers can work with schools in the section on 'ways of working with schools and colleges' but support for young people's CEIAG it must be underpinned by impartiality.
All-Age Careers Service
Careers education and careers guidance are complementary and good careers education ensures that guidance is part of a process, and not an isolated incident. Together they constitute a move away from the 'matching' model of careers guidance that was prevalent for much of the 20th century, to one that enables young people to develop the capacity to manage their careers throughout their working lives, which is much more appropriate for the 21st century labour market, where a 'job for life' is no longer a valid concept.
Currently, expert careers guidance is provided by Connexions which includes a universal careers guidance service along with more generic support for personal issues for vulnerable young people but the government intends to separate these two functions with the introduction of an All-Age Careers Service which will restore the focus on specialist careers guidance for young people, and support them more effectively during their transition to adulthood.
The service will include online, telephone and face to face support. The website and phone helpline will be up and running by September 2011 with the full service available from April 2012.
Education Bill (2011)
The Education Bill (January 2011) heralds a number of changes to schools' responsibilities for CEIAG and will be applied from September 2012. The main changes are outlined below:
- There will be a new duty on schools to secure independent careers guidance for all pupils in Years 9 to 11.
- Independent means provided by someone who is 'not employed by the school'.
- It must be delivered impartially and include information on all options in 16 to 18 education or training, including apprenticeships.
- The duty applies to all maintained schools, including special schools and PRUs. Once it becomes an Act, it will be applied to academies through their Funding Agreements.
- Schools can obtain this guidance from the all age service, from other private providers or individuals.
- This duty replaces the current duty on schools to provide careers education for Year 7 to 11 pupils which will be repealed.
- This duty will, however, still remain in Wales.
- The Secretary of State still expects careers education to be delivered in English schools.
'Careers inspired learning'
John Hayes, the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Skills, is responsible for the introduction and implementation of the new all age careers service. He has made a clear statement about the need to ensure that the careers guidance that young people receive is not 'episodic' but that it should be part of an ongoing developmental process through which young people develop career aspirations, are fully prepared to use careers guidance effectively and develop the skills to put their career plans in place. He calls this 'careers inspired learning' and recognises the important role that employers make to this through their work with schools and young people.
Impartiality
The most recent guidance on what careers education should include is called the Framework for Impartial Careers Education 7 - 19 and was produced by the then Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2010. Impartiality is defined as being in the interests of the young person, rather than in the interests of any one institution or organisation. Of course, employers may see a benefit of working with young people in school in order to help them to recruit the 'right' people. It would be much better for retention, however, if they are fully informed of all aspects of working in a particular sector, rather than just focussing on the most positive aspects.
This framework is underpinned by six principles, which are that careers education should:
1. empower young people to plan and manage their own futures
2. enable them to progress successfully
3. provide comprehensive information on all learning routes and opportunities
4. respond to the needs of each learner
5. raise aspirations
6. actively promote equality of opportunity and challenges stereotypes
Working closely with teachers in schools will help employers to focus their work so that they can best support these principles.
Useful sources of information:
General updates on all issues relating to CEIAG, regular briefings and newsletters can be found at: www.cegnet.co.uk
The Wolf report on vocational education can be found at: www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/The%Wolf%20Report.pdf
icould: www.icould.com
Careers Box: www.careersbox.co.uk
Confederation of British Industry (CBI): http://highereducation.cbi.org.uk/uploaded/fulfilling_potential.pdf
Keep up with the progress of the 2011 Education Bill: www.education.gov.uk/educationbill
National Careers Service for England update (from BIS in April 2011): http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/john-hayes-national-careers-service-for-england