As part of its ongoing Careers Guidance: Guaranteed campaign, the Association of Colleges has launched a report based on the results of a series of surveys about the quality of independent careers advice and guidance in schools.
The report Why Careers Guidance: Guaranteed is crucial highlights several areas of concern, which include:
· Refusing offers from college liaison officers to speak to pupils
· Non participation in taster days
· Not distributing college prospectuses
· Only allowing college liaison officers to speak to selected students
· Refusing to display college information in careers units or across the school site.
Colleges are concerned that students receive poor advice, which often results in them taking a course which is not appropriate for them or their career ambitions. Many drop out of education in frustration and risk becoming Neet.
The surveys were conducted over three years to allow us to compare careers advice since the Government introduced a statutory duty for schools in 2012 to provide this guidance. Since then our member colleges have noticed little difference in the way schools interact with them.
Schools – which don’t receive extra funding to undertake this statutory duty – are not the best place for pupils to get full and impartial advice about careers. Previous research by AoC highlighted concerns around teachers’ knowledge about the local jobs market and the impact of the perverse incentives that exist to keep pupils in school sixth forms.
