Careers education and guidance
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Careers education and guidance
Introduction
Successful transitions – whether from lower secondary to upper secondary; at age 16; into work-based training or university; or into work at any age – are life-enhancing for individuals and crucial to our future social and economic well-being. They are also an indicator of a good school. Careers education and guidance (CEG) is therefore at the heart of a school's personal development programme and all teachers have a role in securing successful transitions for their students.
This course is designed to help teachers in secondary schools support students in planning their futures in learning and work. It assumes that you, the teacher, are working in a team with your school's careers co-ordinator and are involved in:
teaching careers lessons as part of your school's personal development programme;
taking part in work-related learning activities which help students prepare for working life; or
supporting students in planning their transition into, through and out of the 14–19 phase.
It does not try to turn you into a specialist careers adviser, but aims to give you the competence and confidence to provide students with informed help and to refer them to specialised information and guidance when they need it.
Find out more about studying with The Open University by visiting our online prospectus.
Learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
understand the rationale for careers education and guidance (CEG) and young people's need for it
understand your school's statutory responsibilities for CEG and its links with Connexions
understand the basic knowledge and skills needed to help students access careers information and guidance;
understand the school's CEG programme and the confidence to carry out your role in it.
1 Helping students plan their future
1.1 The importance of good careers guidance
Most people spend over 40 years working for a living. Some work until they drop. Imagine how it must feel to spend the whole time doing something that you dislike or even hate. That's where careers work comes in. Good careers education and guidance can give young people a flying start by helping them gain the basic knowledge and skills they need to begin navigating their way successfully through career choices and changes.
Careers education and guidance in a nutshell (DfES, 2004)
1.2 What is a ‘career’?
Understanding the key terms in CEG is vital to understanding your role in it. Very few students go into full-time jobs at 16 and the concept of ‘career’ as a job for life is irrelevant to the twenty-first century labour market. Click below to read a careers overview, which explores this further.
(Note: the QCA booklet 'Informing choices' mentioned in the instructions at the end of this overview is no longer available online)
A more useful concept of career is a person's pathway through learning and work. Planning that journey should start in lower secondary school at the latest, when students have to make subject and course choices. They need to make choices that reflect their interests and strengths, while making sure they don't close any doors to possible future pathways. They will need your help, whether in formal careers lessons, in one-to-one guidance interviews, in preparing for work experience, or just in a passing question as they go out of the door at the end of a lesson or during a tutor period.
Now look at Activity 1.
Activity 1
This is best undertaken with a group of colleagues. Record a short extract from any well known soap or drama, e.g. Casualty, The Bill. Then, with colleagues:
List the jobs you see being performed.
Which have the longest training, and which the shortest?
Which allow for a relaxed and interesting lifestyle? Which ones do not?
Which jobs would you say are ‘careers’ and which are ‘just a job’?
Consider how you would define the terms: job, occupation and career? How do they compare with the definitions given in ‘Key terms from careers education and guidance’ in the link below?
Click below to read 'Key terms for careers education and guidance', which may also be useful.
2 What CEG should a school provide?
2.1 Providing careers education and guidance
It is crucial for young people to have high-quality and impartial information and guidance to get the most out of their learning, to enable successful progression from one stage to another and to inform the important choices that young people make.
14–19 Education and Skills (DfES, 2005)
Since the 1997 Education Act, there has been a statutory requirement for schools in England to provide CEG. In addition, there is a requirement for the provision of work-related learning (WRL) at Key Stage 4, as well as an entitlement for all students to enterprise education (from September 2005).
Both CEG and WRL have non-statutory guidance which schools are urged to use when planning programmes for students; these can be accessed at CEG Guidance and WRL Guidance. To test your knowledge, complete the quiz in Activity 2.
Activity 2
Test your knowledge in the interactive quiz below.
With colleagues, consider how CEG is provided in your school:
What curriculum models for CEG are used in your school with each year group?
What roles do teachers and other staff in your school have in providing CEG?
Consider the strengths and weaknesses of these models in relation to the needs of the school's students.
Think about how CEG and WRL are similar and also different.
2.2 What CEG can deliver for schools
In the Ofsted inspection framework for English schools, based on the five themes from Every Child Matters, CEG is part of the school's self-evaluation of how it helps young people ‘achieve economic well-being’. Some of the evidence for achieving that outcome is how well young people are ‘prepared for working life’. CEG also helps achieve the outcome of ‘making a positive contribution where… young people are helped to manage changes and respond to challenges in their lives; and… young people are supported at key transition points in their lives’. Now turn to Activity 3.
Activity 3
Click below to read about the role of Connexions.
Having read the preceeding piece, ask your school's careers co-ordinator:
Who is your school's Connexions personal adviser? (There may be more than one)
When is he/she in school?
What does he/she offer to your students?
About the system in your school for referring students to the Connexions PA
Now, click on the link to go to the Connexions website. To find out more about your local Connexions Partnership, click on ‘Partnerships’, then on your region on the map. Another useful related website is Connexions Direct Job4U.
If you work in Scotland you may find the Career Scotland website useful.
For colleagues in Wales, material relevant to CES and work-related education can be found at http://www.careerswales.com.
Information on careers eduction programmes in schools in Northern Ireland can be found at http://www.deni.gov.uk/index/80-curriculumassessmentpg/80-programmes-of-study.htm.
3 What do you need to know and do?
3.1 Transition points for 11–19 year-olds
When 16 year-old Mike Barker told people he wanted to be a film director they laughed at him… Mike's long journey to Hollywood stardom as a director began with a teacher at his school who instilled a sense of confidence into the discouraged teenager. ‘I was going to leave school at 16 and get a job because I wanted a motorbike, but she persuaded me to do my A levels. I told her about wanting to be in the film industry and she introduced me to her husband who was a BBC cameraman. He took me around the country doing jobs in my holidays.’ That was just the beginning. Confidence, plus tenacity and talent have brought him to his latest film release: A Good Woman, starring Scarlett Johansson.
Cambridge Evening News, 3 June, 2005
As a teacher, you can have a lifelong influence on your students’ career pathways – but with out-of-date knowledge of the opportunities available and the routes to them, however well intentioned you are, you can waste students’ time at a very busy stage of their lives.
There are three main transition points for most 11–19 year-olds:
subject and course choices around age 14
at the end of compulsory schooling to post-16 education and/or training;
at age 18 to higher education or employment.
Activity 4 will help you gain some basic knowledge of the opportunities available. You should refer your students to the Connexions resource centre (in England), the school's Connexions PA (in England) and the school's higher education specialists to give them the more detailed knowledge they need.
You will also need to know what financial help is available to students who need it to enable them to continue in full-time education after 16. More information for colleagues in English schools is available from the Cegnet website, click on Managing CEG from the navigation at the top of the page, then download the document on 'Into 14–19 learning'.
Activity 4
Read the case studies document below. Choose one of the case studies, working out what information, advice and guidance you would give to the student who features in it.
There are no ‘correct’ solutions to the issues raised in these case studies. They are best considered by a group of teachers being led by a careers specialist so that ideas can be exchanged and specialist knowledge tapped.
3.2 Opportunities and progress
A young person's life inside and outside school needs to include opportunities that enhance their personal development and the chance to explore activities that extend their interests. You need to be aware of these wider opportunities and to encourage students to participate.
Above all, the information, advice and guidance you offer must be impartial and independent. Your prime purpose is to help the student to progress further along his/her own pathway of lifelong learning.
4 Your school's programme and you
4.1 CEG programmes
My favourite teacher was a PE teacher we called JJ. We got on well. He was a cool guy. He was a teacher I could talk to without any problems. He would sit me down sometimes and try to sort me out. A lot of the teachers I didn't get along with. I wasn't very big on school. It has improved now, I believe, but when I was there they taught you to try to pass exams, they didn't tell you much about life.
Jeremy Guscott, former England international rugby player.
The rationale for CEG, its general principles and schools' and teachers' duties, provide the background for what will happen in the classroom, the careers library and the interview room to enable students to plan and manage their careers.
All schools are different and a slavish adherence to national guidelines is unlikely to serve all students' needs. Activity 6 assumes that each school has a CEG programme designed to meet its own students' needs.
Good luck with this work. One day you might appear in a newspaper profile of a well-known person as the teacher who most influenced his / her career pathway!
Activity 5
Click below to read the briefing note 'Example of a careers education and guidance policy document'.
How does this compare with your school's policy? Consider the main points covered in a CEG policy. Is your school's policy clear about the role that school staff play in the planning and delivery of CEG programmes? You may find this checklist useful.
Click below to read 'Your role in the CEG programme'.
Now obtain a copy of your school's full scheme of work for CEG.
Look through it to get a sense of the learning progression students go through the school.
Read in detail the scheme of work for the year group relevant for you.
Look for the relationship between some activities and the main aims of CEG – for example, which ones are mainly concerned with career exploration?
Conclusion
This free course provided an introduction to studying Education, Childhood & Youth. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance, and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.
References
Acknowledgements
The Open University worked in collaboration with the Specialist School and Academies Trust to prepare this course for its original publication on TeachandLearn.net.
This course was written by Sylvia Thomson
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence
Course image: Public Information Office in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit:
DfES, (2004) ‘Careers Overview’, Careers Education and Guidance in a Nutshell, and Example of a Careers education and guidance policy document. Crown copyright material is reproduced under Class Licence Number C01W0000065 with the permission of the Controller if HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
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