Are young people getting the #careers information, advice and guidance they need? Listen here to our podcast on careers with thanks to Nicola Hall, Careers and Enterprise Company, Ryan Gibson, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Katy Tibbles, Turner Schools.

Mark Leech  0:12  

Hello and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech and today we're going to be talking about the wide world of careers and careers education. Ofsted has recently published 'The independent review of careers guidance in schools and further education and skills providers' - quite a long title.  But a very interesting report and we'll talk about that in a little while. Joining me today I have quite a big panel actually Paul Joyce Ofsted's Deputy Director for further education and skills, Ian Tustian, who is an advisor on policy and quality of training at Ofsted. Nicola Hall, who is Director of Education at the Careers and Enterprise Company, Ryan Gibson, who is senior advisor for careers at the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and Katy Tibbles, the trust head of careers at Turner Schools. Nicola, I wonder if you can talk a bit about the current landscape and the big changes in careers guidance in schools and further education recently and a bit about the pressures on careers leaders at the moment?

Nicola Hall  1:22  

So, the careers guidance system has changed immeasurably over the last few years, and has really significantly moved forward. And we now see a modern industry-lead careers guidance system, which has been embedded through a national infrastructure of careers hubs, which is delivered and led by trained and qualified careers leaders across the country. So over 3000 careers leaders have now been trained through a fully funded suite of qualifications, which is supported by the Department for Education. We've seen over recent years almost universal adoption of the Gatsby benchmarks across schools, special schools and colleges throughout England. And those benchmarks set out a world class standard for those institutions to follow. And there's no cost to any of these services to educational institutions in England. Additional changes include a really increased focus on parental engagement within careers guidance, but also the introduction of enhanced provider access legislation to ensure that young people are accessing parity of impartial information regarding apprenticeships and technical education. Whilst the professional status of careers leaders and the elevation of careers leadership develops well across the country. There are still some pressures that we commonly see. Firstly, a lack of strategic leadership support. This strategic support allows careers to be aligned when it's done well to school development and improvement priorities. Another potential barrier for careers leaders is when they are being asked to undertake two roles. So that of the role of careers leader which is oversight and leadership of the whole careers programme in an institution. But also sometimes it can be problematic when the careers leader is also asked to undertake the role of impartial specialists careers advisor. Both of these roles are essential within the careers guidance system. But both of them are significant in size. And if we see those two roles conflated it can pose challenges for careers leaders. In some cases, careers leaders have a lack of allocated time and resource. For example, it might be still commonplace in some institutions, for careers leaders to have a small TLR (teaching and learning responsibility) and a couple of hours a week allocated to careers leadership. In the context of the size of the role and the achievement of the eight Gatsby benchmarks. This is likely to be insufficient, unless there is well layered wider operational support for the careers leader. And sometimes careers leaders can tell us that they're a lone voice. However, I like to liken careers to agendas like literacy, and the development of literacy so that everyone in a school or a college has responsibility to be careers curious to be able to hold careers, conversations with young people and to be able to effectively signpost to specialists as well as help young people understand careers opportunities by building those conversations into curriculum plans.

Mark Leech  4:37  

Thanks. Thanks, Nichola. So there's lots to unpack there and I think maybe before we come to the Ofsted team to talk a bit about our report and what it what it found it be quite interesting to hear from Katy, I think on on some of those challenges and how you deal with them, I suppose in in the day job as it were. 

Katy Tibbles  4:58  

Lots of the points that Nicola has highlighted, things that either I've experienced in the past, or I know that my peers in other schools are still experiencing, particularly around the pressures involved with careers leadership and the need to have a strategic role and to have a vision and to be in a position where you can drive that forward. I do know lots of careers leaders who are also careers advisors. And that's something that doesn't sit very comfortably with me, because I think they are two very different roles. 

Mark Leech  5:34  

So yeah, to the uninitiated, include myself in that, do you want to join a break down the differences?

Katy Tibbles  5:40  

Yes. So for me, like a careers leader is you need to have a good knowledge and understanding of the careers landscape. But you need to be able to turn that then into a strategic vision that meets the needs of your school. So there's no one size fits all I would say in careers, the Gatsby benchmarks provide a fantastic framework for us all to work towards. But for a careers leader, you really need to consider how they fit within your own context, and how you can meet the needs of your pupils through the benchmark, that is quite a different skill set to perhaps a careers adviser who on a day to day basis, might be more operational, working more directly with the young people delivering guidance interviews. And there are two very different needs to different skill sets. Some people can do them both, which is fantastic. Some people have strengths in different each of those areas. So for me, I do think that that's very important to recognise the role that the careers leader plays beyond that of a careers advisor, and the need for that leadership, development, strategic thinking, but also to be able to be an advocate at a senior level for careers in a school because whilst we have made huge progress over the last few years, there is still a long way to go. Some circumstances there are senior leaders that still need a bit of convincing actually about how important careers is within a school setting. So your careers leader needs to be able to be an advocate for careers and always be fighting for it when we're talking about school priorities and trust priorities. They need to be the person in the room that saying, Okay, how can careers contribute to this?

Mark Leech  7:33  

Thank you. That's, that's really helpful. And I'm going to come to Ian in a second to talk about our report. But, Ryan, I just wanted to bring you in quickly because we've we've heard a lot about the Gatsby benchmarks. And again, if you're not from the careers world, you might not be as au fait with the with the benchmarks do want to talk a little bit about what they are, how they're used, and how that plays into the role of careers leaders in schools.

Ryan Gibson  7:56  

The Gatsby benchmarks as both Katy and Nicola have alluded to define what good looks like in relation to careers guidance, there based on international evidence of what works and achieving all of the elements of each of the benchmarks is what constitutes world class careers guidance. It's good to see the recent education select committee report and indeed, Ofsted independent review of careers guidance, recognising that schools and further education and skills providers find the Gatsby benchmarks useful in developing and reviewing their careers provision and was great to hear Katy allude to that just now. When we think about the benchmarks, they've become the bedrock really of career guidance in England. They're embedded in the government's career strategy, they are central to that. And CEC data shows that over 90% of schools and colleges now measure their progress against this framework. Nicola used the phrase almost universal adoption. And that's what we've seen, we've seen almost universal adoption of the benchmarks. And that's something that was confirmed in our own open consultation survey, which we ran at Gatsby earlier this year. It what that shows is that belief in the value of the benchmarks is strong, and it's widespread. And I think that's because they're working, and they're having an impact. We heard the importance there earlier of senior leaders and the role of senior leaders and senior leaders have consistently shared with us that the positive impacts that the benchmarks are having on outcomes for young people. And this is definitely reflected in national data, which I'm sure Nicola will, will talk about. But it shows that many more young people are leaving education with improved career readiness now, improved destination outcomes as well with the greatest impact being on some of the most disadvantaged young people in some of the most disadvantaged circumstances. 

Mark Leech  9:58  

Thanks, Ryan that's, that's really helpful. So I've got a couple of colleagues from Ofsted with me before going to - Paul, just quic