The next NICEC seminar on Monday 18th November 2019 5.00pm-6.30pm will be focusing on Careers Provision in Further Education. We're planning for the event to spark thoughts and conversation from attendees on the similarities and differences on the Careers provision in Further Education compared to other settings as well as putting the spotlight on a sector not always well represented in Careers policy conversations. Sometimes referred to as the "forgotton" sector in Education, Further Education is currently enjoying a rare period in the national spotlight as new vocational qualifications come on line and policy makers raise the importance of the sector to a post Brexit skills landscape.
We're fortunate to be joined by Anthony Barnes, one of the authors of the Gatsby Benchmark toolkit for Colleges and Emily Tanner from the Careers and Enterprise Company who will revealing new Compass data based on responses from the FE sector.
Russell George – will introduce the session with an overview of the context of work in FE including the roll-out of T-levels and funding constraints and provide a case study of delivery in Milton Keynes College
Anthony Barnes will share insights from the development of the Colleges Gatsby Tool Kit on challenges and good practice in careers provision.
Emily Tanner will share insights from The Careers & Enterprise Company drawing on the Compass benchmarking tool.
There will then be a discussion on similarities and differences with delivery in other settings.
Register for tickets to join us at Hamilton House (WC1H 9BB) for the seminar here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/careers-provision-in-further-education-tickets-77371441063
Posted in Careers Theory, CEIAG Policy and tagged Careers Entreprise Company, gatsby foundation, nicec on October 25, 2019 by fecareersiag. Leave a comment
The Destinations data still isn't there for the Gatsby pilot
It has now been three and half academic years since the North East Gatsby pilot kicked off with the aim of implementing the Gatsby career benchmarks in a range of education providers. The Pilot was funded by the Foundation to the tune of £9,000 per school or college plus the central support offered by an appointed Pilot Lead.
Any impacts and lessons of the pilot should be key indicators for both the CEC and the DfE as they monitor the value of the Gatsby benchmarks in improving CEIAG provision. The fact that the Pilot is already being replicated (with lower funding levels) across the country as the CEC rolls out its Careers Hubs programme should only reinforce this need.
To learn these lessons, iCEGS have been commissioned to conduct an evaluation of the pilot which aims to
document a systematic attempt by education providers to implement all eight Benchmarks and establish what impacts might result from the implementation of the Benchmarks.
and, last month, an interim report was published giving an update on the findings of the evaluation.
The interim report finds that the schools and colleges involved in the Pilot self-reported that they did expand or improve their CEIAG provision according to the Benchmarks
This finding is not itself cross referenced against any external accountability of the schools or colleges CEIAG provision such as Ofsted reports. On a positive note though, the report does show that improvement (again, with the self-reported caveat) is possible across all types of education establishment. It seems that the clarification of CEIAG offered by the Benchmarks and the categorisation of the success criteria can be molded to work across the variety of providers in the English education system which is a major positive for policy makers looking for whole sector improvement strategies.
The report also finds that students across the providers responded with "significantly higher career readiness scores" which is an important variable to measure but, of the potential impacts, not the one that would hold the most sway with policy makers I would imagine. For this to be the case, further work would need to be done here to show a link with higher career readiness scores to actual employment and earning outcomes for young people much like the, now very well-known, employer engagement research from the Education & Employers taskforce.
The report also notes that, during the Pilot evaluation period, the schools involved reported an increase in the number of A-C GCSE grades but that it is not possible to draw any conclusions from this as there is no historical data to judge trends and no causation ties to be found to the Gatsby pilot. The success rates of FE College learners is not mentioned nor is any impact on attendance statistics of pupils in the area.
The interim report then praises the role of the Pilot area facilitator in
Creating a community of shared knowledge, networks and practice
which is clearly a benefit that a supported Pilot scheme could enact but one that would cause many professionals working in Local Authority skills development to wonder how that is different from their work which, in my experience at least, usually includes a termly forum where school and college leaders or careers leaders can meet.
Perhaps the part of the report most useful for other Hub Leads and Careers Leaders is the Emergent Challenges section (page 14). The fact that FE Colleges will struggle with Benchmark 8 (Personal Guidance) won't be news to any practitioner grappling with the requirements to offer this highly individual service within current funding envelopes but the issue of tracking provision against the Benchmarks is one which I think the CEC do need to be on top of. Their Tracker tool has the basis to offer much support in this area but the wide range of approaches in how providers input activities will soon cause reporting problems for them. I've seen examples of a school inputting every Careers lunchtime drop in session they run, meaning huge numbers of repetitive provisions being added which boost the total number of activities in a Benchmark.
This then leaves the elephant in the room. The destinations data of the actual students participating in all of this provision is not mentioned in this interim report but this is due to the timescales involved and it will be referenced in the final report. Many of the pupils attending those providers during the pilot time will not have left those providers yet and, for those that have, only one years worth of data (2017) has been published by the DfE. I blogged about that 2017 data here and the lack of (positive) impact perceivable in those positive destination indicators so it will be interesting to see what the final report concludes with a researcher's eye looking at a more complete data picture.
At the moment the Pilot evidence shows that providers are reporting that their provision has grown and their institutional behaviours changed because of the Gatbsy Benchmarks and that pupils are more confident about their career readiness. These are small rewards for the sheer scale of system change that has occurred with the formation of the CEC and its subsequent policies (including Hubs, Careers Leaders and employer encounters). The evidence for actual outcomes for students is still lacking. What this is proving though to policy makers is that system change in education is possible (without much funding) if the provision aims are formalised and grouped into 'benchmark' style targets. It seems that schools and colleges, despite their protestations to the contrary, do like to be measured on some of the things they do.
Posted in CEIAG Policy, Employer Engagement, Face 2 Face IAG and tagged Careers Entreprise Company, careers hubs, dfe, Education and Employers Taskforce, gatsby benchmarks, gatsby foundation, icegs, north east gatsby pilot, Tracker on March 11, 2019 by fecareersiag. Leave a comment
February 2018 Careers Guidance for FE & Sixth Form Colleges
The final chapter in a slew of recently published careers guidance documents and reports is a pair of publications focusing on CEIAG provision in FE & Sixth Form Colleges in England.
Coming after the Careers Strategy, the Gatsby benchmarks for schools, the Statutory schools Guidance and it's sister document Good Career Guidance Benchmarks for Young People in Colleges, Careers Guidance: Guidance for further education colleges and sixth form colleges, it's important to note, is not a Statutory document for the Further Education Sector. The exempt charitable status of many of the providers in the sector does not allow for such diktats. Where the leverage comes from for the compliance with the standards and expectations set out in the document are the clear warnings that failure to adhere could result in the withdrawal of ESFA grant funding (which would be a major decision to take).
Following from their work on school CEIAG standards which was well received by both practitioners and policy markers, Gatsby again supply the backbone of the standards document. In this instance though a critical piece of work is missing which then damages confidence in all that follows. The original Gatsby report used a number of sources to build their recommended standards. As well as looking at provision in other countries, reviewing research and interviewing stakeholders, the Foundation also commissioned PWC to figure how much this would cost an average school. For the College document, conversations with Colleges seem to have happened but no specific costing documents have been published. This missing building block means that the recommended standards of provision that follow ring a little hollow, especially in the sector of education that has a building consensus of agreement in its underfunding.
The guidance in the document itself falls into three categories:
Provision that makes perfect sense
Provision that makes perfect sense but is going to need a lot more resource
The Brexit Unicorn is riding into town before this happens
Much does. Asking every College to have a "Careers Leader" to mirror the forthcoming role in schools means that each Post 16 provider can still tailor their student service offer but ensures that a named individual is responsible. An embedded programme of CEIAG that is reviewed regularly, that keeps learner records of interactions and challenges stereotypical thinking would please all practitioners. It's good to see destinations data achieve clear priority and the requirement for employer interactions is only sensible considering the relevant research and the entire remit of most Further Education provision. Asking for clear links between Careers Leaders and SEN provision at previous stages of the learners journey is welcome. Building the work of the CEC into Post 16 Careers work, after the work of the Local Area Reviews, continues the link to local labour market demand. Finally, the clear recommendation for guidance interviews to be conducted by Level 6 and above qualified advisers is a clear signpost for dedicated student support teams in Post 16 provision rather than "one stop shop" offers.
Provision that makes perfect sense by is going to need a lot more resource
As the forthcoming T Levels will also demand, ensuring that work experience is a standard component of a study programme is a desirable outcome but one which will require a lot more opportunities for work experience placements.
Expanding the remit of the CEC to enable Colleges and schools to meet all of the Benchmarks across both Guidance documents is sensible but, I'm sure Enterprise Co-ordaintors would agree, they would need more support than just new provision mapping tools to achieve this. A release of a College specific Compass tool in September 2018 is welcome but will not be near enough.
The Brexit Unicorn rides into town
Benchmark 8 is the steepest mountain to climb. It requires that every 16-18 learner has at least one guidance interview before the end of the course. This would be a huge demand on staffing levels across many Colleges. I think that, comparably my own College is well staffed. We have 4 Advisers (including myself) and part-time resource support working across 3 larger sites and another 4 satellite sites. Approximately 4000 Post 16 learners study across the full spectrum of post 16 provision. We strive to make our service as accessible as possible but it would be true that if all of these learners were to take up a full guidance interview then our work with Adult learners, part-time learners and the community will be impacted. Achieving this benchmark would require a fundamental expansion of our staffing levels and, I suspect, the vast majority of Post 16 provision would have to invest from a lower base .
Another requirement that, I think, is pie in the sky is the Benchmark 3 guidance that
records of advice given should be integrated with those given at the previous stage of the learner's education (including their secondary school) where these are made available
I just can't foresee standard practice across the country of Careers Leaders in secondary schools getting permission from pupils and then sharing guidance records of all students to all of their destinations. It might happen in pockets across MATs or school to adjoined or local Sixth Form transitions but not to Further Education Colleges.
Post 16 careers provision is a different, more varied beast than provision in secondary schools. The landscape of curriculum, qualification and delivery are all more diverse meaning that the journey and destinations are also wider. This means challenges for any standardization guidance but one that would really want to make a change would be a project that took upon itself the, admittedly considerable, work of finding out how much this would all cost separate from the previous school costings.
Posted in CEIAG Policy and tagged Careers guidance, careers strategy, further education colleges, gatsby benchmarks, gatsby foundation, Post 16, sixth form colleges, supplementary guidance on February 5, 2018 by fecareersiag. Leave a comment
The CEC State of the Nation report
The latest publication from the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) continuing their expanding library of research, State of the Nation 2017: Careers and enterprise provision in England's schools was published earlier this month. Utilizing the "State of the Nation" title also employed by the annual updates from the Social Mobility Commission (and so helping affirm the aims of the CEC with policy makers), this is a publication which shows the Company moving on from earlier releases which audited the CEIAG landscape and onto a new stage of updating on progress made.
The report is based on 578 responses from secondary schools who have completed the online Careers program auditing tool, Compass, and the comparison of this set of data with the data collected for the original Gatsby Good Career guidance report in 2014.
The CEC makes a number of claims from this exercise but the accompanying media coverage focused on the responses which indicate an improvement in school provision since 2014 as more schools report that they are meeting more benchmarks.
There is evidence of improvement since the original Gatsby survey in 2014. Schools in 2016/2017 are achieving an average of half a Benchmark more than they were in 2014/2015 (1.87 versus 1.34). The proportion of schools not achieving any Benchmarks has fallen by one third from 31% to 21%. The proportion of schools achieving half the Benchmarks has more than doubled from 6% to 16%
Slide from presentation by Tristram Hooley
Which sounds positive but these are figures which should be treated with caution and, like the rest of the report, taken in the round alongside other data. These are the points I found most interesting in the report:
1. This is a small number of schools and a narrow method of evidence collection
As can be seen in the Appendices, the 2014 Gatsby report used multiple sources of evidence to form it's benchmarks, recommendations and costings. Six overseas visits took place with interviews with practitioners, policy makers and stakeholders in these countries conducted. Visits and interviews with six Independent schools also added to the evidence base as well as reviewing eighteen previous reports on CEIAG provision. Finally an online survey was completed by 361 secondary schools in winter 2014.
The breakdown of the responding schools
As a baseline, 361 schools (from approximately 3329 secondary schools at the time) is a thin slice so it's positive that 578 have used the Compass tool but this is still small. The 2014 figures included only 9 schools then judged as Requiring Improvement by Ofsted, the 2017 report does not include this figure. In 2017 there are now 3408 secondary schools in England so 578 equates to roughly 17% of secondary schools responding.
2. This is based on self evaluation
Asking any professional if they do a good job isn't going to get objective responses. Both the 2014 and 2017 reports are clear to point out that questions of validity could arise both from the bias of the overall sample (those taking the time to complete the survey could be more likely to be interested in CEIAG for example) and responses being overly generous to the CEIAG provision on offer in their establishment (via the Overconfidence Effect).
None of this data relates to outcomes. No students are asked by an objective third party on their view of provision, no destination data monitored, no LEO data cross referenced, no employers surveyed. Self evaluation via online questionnaire is an extremely limited (but cheap) method of providing reference points and progress evaluation.
This is typified by the inclusion of one of the case study schools that reported itself to be meeting "seven or eight" of the Gatsby benchmarks. Looking at the most recent KS4 destination data (2015) for that school, you can see that all of the data that a school with a strong CEIAG offer should be achieving well on, the school isn't:
Pupils staying staying in education or employment for at least 2 terms after KS4 is 86%, well below the 94% average for English state funded schools
Pupils not staying in education or employment for at least 2 terms after KS4 is 11% well above the 5% national average
The percentage of KS4 leavers moving into Apprenticeships is 3%, half the nation average of 6%
It's important to remember that behind all of those statistics are the actual students who each had their own story, background and challenges to overcome but these are not the statistics to highlight the positive social justice leveling work of CEIAG,
The report references these omissions on page 26 and makes the somewhat valid point that
One limitation of attainment and progression data is that it is backward looking and thus if we look for relationships between the Compass data and outcomes, we are comparing one cohort's career provision with another cohort's outcomes
and conclude that the destination data sources mentioned above could be used to correlate with Compass data over a longer period of time. This would enable relationships (if any) between consistent quality CEIAG provision and student outcomes to be found. This is an admirable goal to be supported in future but it isn't how accountability in education works. Ofsted gradings are held by schools for years after the inspection took place, a young person leaving Year 11 this summer might have attended an "outstanding" school but could be based on a verdict of provision that happened seven years ago. There is always a lag between monitoring of provision and actual provision.
3. Further bad social mobility vibes
Another of the included case studies is also a little tone deaf for an organisation that is keen to show that it playing it's role in the Government's social mobility agenda through the Opportunity Area policy. Including Simon Langton Girls Grammar School, a selective entry school whose pupils, including the 5.6% eligible for free school meals, must take the Kent Procedure for Entrance to Secondary Education tests to enrol is at odds with the overall aim of both the document and the CEC. The CEIAG work at Simon Langton might be exceptional, it certainly features prominently on their website, but this is not helping disadvantaged pupils. Areas with selection at age 11 fail the poorest children and the CEC should steer clear of involving itself in work that perpetuates these outcomes.
4. If the survey responses are to be believed, then Quality Mark Awards are far too generous
The 2017 data survey data reports that schools that hold a Careers Quality Mark (now all joined together in the Quality in Careers Standard) achieve a higher number of Gatbsy benchmarks than those schools without but that this still only reaches an average of 2.63 of the 8 benchmarks for those schools. This is a blow to those who advocate that Quality Marks are a valid indicator of provision quality. The results of a self reported survey, including the biases mentioned above, are reporting that their CEIAG provision does not meet the benchmarks the external monitored Quality Marks claim they do. That there is so little congruence between these results is evidence that Careers Quality Marks assessment and monitoring processes have not been anywhere near stringent or demanding enough and need to improve. As the report says
As the Quality in Careers Standard works towards aligning fully with the Benchmarks we would expect to see schools achieving the Quality in Careers Standard reaching all eight Benchmarks
but this will be a challenge for a service paid for by the schools who have volunteered to be inspected to achieve.
Showing the impact of the type of strategic work the CEC is involved with is always going to be difficult. With so many stakeholders involved in the delivery of provision and so many factors influencing the outcomes for young people, concentrating on the input factors to begin with is sensible but, due to a total reliance on self evaluation, this is also with it's downsides. Over the forthcoming months I would expect to see the CEC to transition towards utilizing more quantitative data sources on which to base their judgments of progress.
Posted in CEIAG Policy and tagged Careers Entreprise Company, destination statistics, gatsby foundation, Grammar Schools, LEO data, Ofsted inspections, Quality Awards, Quality in Careers Standard, social mobility, social mobility commission on October 25, 2017 by fecareersiag. 7 Comments
The bit the Sub-Committee left out
It's been days, whole 24 hour periods of time have passed, since a report has been published by some organisation or another on the state of Careers work in English schools. So, this week, the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy decided to break the silence by publishing the first Joint Report of the Business, Innovation and Skills and Education Committees of Session 2016-2017.
This followed the usual Committee procedure of taking written evidence, visiting providers and taking oral evidence from witnesses.
The inquiry itself was a follow up to the Education Committee inquiry published back in July (my take on that here) as the Sub-Committee felt that the Government response was lacklustre.
The Sub-Committee report reiterates many of the phrases and conclusions seen before across the multitude of Careers reports in the past few years. Careers provision in schools is "patchy," drink. Schools with Sixth Forms are "reluctant to provide impartial advice and guidance," drink. That the marketplace for Careers services to schools and students is "overly complicated," drink. Like a wedding band Beatles, the report covers all the hits.
One aspect that was noticeable though on my reading, is that the Sub-Committee likes spending schools money.
Recommendation 2
An effective school careers programme should include a combination of impartial and independent advice and guidance, careers education embedded in the curriculum, and opportunities for students to engage with employers. We consider the Gatsby Foundation's eight benchmarks a useful statement of the careers provision to which all schools should be aspiring. The Government's policy objective should be to incentivise all schools to ensure their careers provision is brought up to a good standard and to hold them to account when they fail to do so.
We recommend that the Government, once the new quality brand is in place, amend statutory guidance to require all schools to work towards being accredited under this brand, and only to use careers services from organisations holding it.
We recommend that the Government statutory guidance is amended to require those delivering advice and guidance in schools to hold, at a minimum, a relevant level 6 qualification.
Those four recommendations aren't the only ones that relate directly to schools but those are the ones that come with a £ cost attached. How much? Well, the Gatbsy report which is much quoted my the Sub-Committee has already done the hard yards here and included a cost breakdown for schools wanting to reach it's benchmarks. For all secondary schools in England this reaches a rough figure of £181m. The costing laid out in the Gatsby report include an annual £15,000 for CPD and £8,000 for organising the health & safety and administration requirements needed for a work experience program, so that covers Recommendations 11 and 18.
What isn't included in the Gatsby costing though is funding for Quality Awards inspection. Again, I've previously calculated that this would be around £5.71m for every school in England to achieve one.
So, from this one report, that's £186.71m schools are expected to find from their existing budgets with £181m of that to be found every academic year.
School funding is extremely tight with the number of schools running deficits growing. There is plenty else in the Sub-Committee report that I could take issue with (the reliance on an inspectorate who won't even visit around 20% of schools to inspect CEIAG for example) but it's the complete lack of consideration of how schools are going to fund the recommendations they put forward that deserves the greatest annoyance.
Posted in CEIAG Policy and tagged business select committee, Education Committee, gatsby foundation, Quality Awards, work experience on November 3, 2016 by fecareersiag. 2 Comments