Graham Stuart: Careers advice to students isn’t up to the job

More complex career options, and the rising participation age in education and training, make it more essential than ever that teenagers get the support and advice they need.

There is also the difficult economic backdrop to consider. Around 960,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are unemployed. That is one in five of the cohort.

Last year, Alan Milburn, the former Cabinet minister, identified poor careers advice as one of the practical barriers preventing fair access to the professions.

When considering this issue, it is worth putting on record that the coalition inherited a bad situation. The old Connexions service is little mourned overall, but what has followed is not acceptable either.

The transfer of responsibility for careers advice to schools last year was regrettable, as was the way it was done.

The report published by Ofsted last week revealed the damaging consequences. Ofsted assess that 80 per cent of schools are not providing effective careers guidance for all their students in Years 9, 10 and 11.

All in all, Ofsted’s report made an irresistible case for change. We might well ask, how did this situation come about? Simply, Ministers had other priorities at the time. They were under great budgetary pressure, and careers guidance lost out.

But there is an urgent need for a rethink of Government policy in this area. Only 12 per cent of educators polled by the Pearson Think Tank said they “knew a lot” about the new duty to deliver independent, impartial careers guidance. One in three admitted they had never heard of it.

When the Select Committee visited Bradford College in October 2012, I met a young man whose experience typifies the waste of time, money and potential to which poor careers guidance, or the complete lack of it, can lead.

He was taking a course to join the uniformed services. He had wasted the previous year on a course that was not right for him and would not have led to a job in the fire service, which he wanted to join.

To add insult to injury, this young man had found out during the appropriate course that the fire service is now shrinking, and that there was unlikely to be a job for him at the end.

That is just one anecdotal example. When the experience is scaled up, huge amounts of money are being wasted.

What do we do to fix this? A key part of the answer lies with the new National Careers Service.

Even a fraction of the old Connexions budget invested in the NCS could extend its remit to support, and challenge, schools, and ensure they provide proper careers guidance for all young people.

This is a conclusion endorsed by a huge range of organisations, including Ofsted, the CBI, the National Careers Council and the Association of School and College Leaders.

Since its creation, the NCS has done fantastic work. In the last 12 months, it has delivered 1.1 million face to face advice sessions with 650,000 adults and handled 367,000 phone calls and web chats.

Yet the potential of the NCS is largely going to waste. Today’s report shows only three per cent of educators polled by Pearson knew a “lot” about it, while 49 per cent knew a “little”.

The remaining half of those polled had never heard of it. Likewise, a study published by Barnardo’s last month reported that not one young person interviewed for the research had heard of the National Careers Service website.

To date, the Department for Education has not been pulling its weight in supporting the NCS. Whereas the Department of Business, Industry and Skills contributed over £84m in 2012/13, the DfE provided only £4.7m.

The DfE needs to up its game. An extra £50m in funding, set against the £56bn education budget, could make a huge difference and deliver a much more sophisticated and responsive service.

I was pleased to see Ofsted recommended last week that its inspectors should take greater account of careers guidance. Careers plans could form an important part of the new accountability regime for schools. The blunt truth is that the careers system in our schools is inadequate.

This is why the National Careers Service needs proper funding if it is to expand its remit and do a good job for the young as well as the old.

If this support was available, it could help young people – such as the young man I met in Bradford – to make the right choices first time.

If the system fails these students, a human and economic cost is incurred – both by the young people themselves, and by the wider society that risks squandering their talents.

• Graham Stuart is the Beverley & Holderness MP, and also chairman of Parliament’s education select committee. This is an edited version of a speech that he delivered to The Pearson Think Tank yesterday on careers services.