CAREERS GUIDANCE IN SCHOOLS BILL

More on the Careers Guidance in schools Bill led by Mark Jenkinson of the Conservative Party.

This Private Member Bill sponsored by Mark Jenkinson received its Third Reading in the Lords on 25 March – and is now awaiting Royal Assent

There has been a statutory duty to provide careers guidance that fallen on maintained schools, special schools and pupil referral units, but not academies, although many academies have a contractual obligation to secure independent careers guidance through their own funding agreements. This landmark piece of legislation, a private members Bill sponsored by Mark Jenkinson, sought to address this anomaly by placing the same requirement on all types of state-funded secondary schools, helping to create a much more level playing field. As stated many academies, by virtue of the funding agreements put in place over the past eight or nine years, are under a duty to provide this guidance. Many of the others will be doing so. But some do not have it in their funding agreement. So, the Bill puts them all on the same statutory footing, effectively giving Ofsted it is hoped, the tools it needs to manage consistent careers advice across the board.

The Bill also extends careers advice down from year 8 to year 7 aimed at ensuring that our children are given the information they need to make the best possible choices.

The Minister ,Gillian Keegan, in the Commons in the Second Reading Debate said “High-quality careers advice is absolutely vital to help young people to prepare for their future. This Bill will play a key part in levelling up opportunity, ensuring that high-quality careers advice is available for all. Disadvantaged young people will gain most, as they face the greatest barriers. They have fewer role models and networks—they probably think networks are something to do with their PCs. This Bill will make a difference, with more opportunities for pupils to meet more employers from an earlier age and to be inspired about the world of work, including about jobs in emerging sectors, such as green jobs.”

Baroness Barran, for the government, said in the Third Reading in the Lords on 25 March

“This simple but effective Bill will ensure that all pupils in all types of state-funded secondary schools in England are legally entitled to independent careers guidance throughout their secondary education. That means high-quality support for every single child in every single state secondary school in every single local authority in England, without exception. It will fulfil a commitment in the Skills for Jobs White Paper, reaching over 600,000 year 7 pupils each year.

I am enormously grateful to my honourable friend the Member for Workington for his work on this important Bill and I congratulate him on ensuring that it passed through the other place. I know that the whole House will be grateful for this move to extend access to independent careers guidance, which will be widely welcomed. The Government are committed to supporting schools across the country to develop and improve their careers provision. The Bill is one step forward in ensuring that our young people receive high-quality careers guidance from an earlier age.”

https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/44716/documents/1258

Please Note also

In the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] awaiting Royal Assent On careers guidance, MPs unanimously supported a government-backed amendment to double the number of mandatory encounters that schools pupils have with providers of technical education and apprenticeships in the bill. Robert Halfon MP, the Chair of the Commons Select Committee, has been making the case for months that the government’s original proposal of three mandatory encounters wasn’t good enough. In fact, Halfon recently proposed that the government should insist on nine encounters over a pupil’s secondary school education.

This is what Halfon said about his proposed amendment in the Second Reading Debate of the Bill:

“My new clause 3 would toughen up the legislation and require schools, technical colleges and apprenticeship providers to talk to pupils about vocational options. It would provide for nine careers guidance meetings in total, with three in each key year group—years 8 and 9, years 10 and 11 and years 12 and 13—rather than just the miserly current offer of three meetings in total. One meeting a year is nothing. We need this stuff going on all the time, with as much encouragement as possible. I actually think that asking for just three meetings a year is low and cautious, so I am trusting the Government to move at least some of the way on this.”

Following this pressure, the government has now changed its own bill and settled on mandating six encounters in the wording of the bill.Speaking from the dispatch box, the skills minister Alex Burghart said the skills bill will “boost productivity and level up our country”.

On the careers backtrack, Burghart said the government’s new position “should help ensure that young people meet a greater breadth of providers and crucially should prevent schools from simply arranging one provider meeting and turning down all other providers”. “The underpinning statutory guidance will include details of the full range of providers that we’d expect all pupils to have the opportunity to meet during their time at secondary school,” he said.