Why careers matters for schools

In many schools, careers education and guidance are viewed as peripheral activities which are secondary to the main purpose of school. In recent years there has been some increased pressure from the Government and Ofsted to pay attention to this area, but it is easy to see it as just another box to be ticked.

But there are some really good reasons why schools should place career guidance at the centre of their mission.

• Education is about transforming the lives of young people. Ultimately this is about helping people to build a positive life and use their education to secure and excel in work.
• Students who are motivated about their future and understand the life relevance of what they are learning focus more on their studies.
• Careers provides a brilliant cross-curricula theme that allows schools to connect subjects (and extra-curricular activities) and build a vision across all  their activities.

With this approach, schools would place the idea of supporting young people to establish a successful career at the heart of everything they do. Career education and guidance then become the connective tissue that allows schools to achieve this kind of vision.

Careers needs to be led

An excellent careers programme has the potential to transform a school, but it won’t just happen by accident. In the Careers Leader Handbook we set out a step-by-step approach to developing your programme.

The first step is to identify a careers leader who is capable of driving the careers programme forward in your school. Schools now have a statutory duty to appoint a careers leader. Such a person can be from a range of professional backgrounds and may combine the role with other tasks within the school. But, they will definitely need time to do the role, possess expertise about what needs to be done, and have the authority in school to drive change.

Careers cannot be viewed as the responsibility of a single person. The days of sitting the careers adviser in a cupboard and sending year 10s and 11s down the corridor to see them are over! Rather, good career guidance is a multi-professional activity that involves all teachers as well as specialist staff like careers advisers and work experience co-ordinators. The role of the careers leader is to manage and co-ordinate all of this activity and to ensure that people work together and  make use of external resources, such as employers, local colleges and universities.

What does a good programme look like?

There is a very clear description of what a good career guidance programme should look like in the Gatsby Benchmarks. This framework sits at the heart of the Careers Leader Handbookas it provides a very clear description of what schools need to do to build their careers programme.

First, they need to have a clear vision and create a plan of what they are trying to achieve. This includes setting out what will be experienced by each year group (starting in year 7 or even before) and how the programme will be structured and led. The Benchmarks set out all the components that make up a good programme. So, it should include things like providing access to labour market information, involving employers and post-secondary education providers, and offering access to careers advisers and work experience.

Perhaps most importantly, a good careers programme should be embedded into the curriculum and personalised to suit the needs of every individual. All this means that careers need to become a universal offering for all your students, as well as something that is delivered in a tailored way that recognises that everyone’s needs are different.

Getting started

Hopefully this blog has inspired you to take another look at your school’s career programme. We believe that a well organised careers programme can be transformational for schools and young people. This requires you to think big and identify a new approach to leading the programme. We hope that the Careers Leader Handbook will provide you with the map that you need to plan this journey.