Secondary education

Introduction

This section provides resources for "making the case" for careers, referring to both challenges that careers services can tackle and evidence that such services work.

The situation in the UK with secondary schools changed significantly over a decade ago. The former “Connexions” service was withdrawn in 2013 with responsibility for careers provision transferring to schools and colleges. Thereafter, a review by the Gatsby Foundation was used to define best practices both in the UK and globally, to define a new set of benchmarks, encapsulating “Good Career Guidance” (Holman, 2014). Subsequently, Gatsby, the Career and Enterprise Company and Education and Employers have contributed to a growing evidence base on “what works”. 

Many smaller scale and some larger scale studies now exist demonstrating the positive outcomes of career guidance on secondary school students. 

Questions now being asked about optimising investment across measures, Gatsby are also due to produce the results of a major review of their benchmarks in autumn 2024, following an extensive literature review of evidence and consultation.

The case for careers

The academic literature and many other publications have made the case for the importance of investment in careers education for this age group. Some of the explicit and implicit motivations that have been cited include the following:

• The imminence of career decisions and the need for plan for them e.g. Ashby and Schoon (2010), OECD’s Career Readiness Project.

• Young people need to be equipped with certain ‘career skills’ to make effective choices and make best use of the educational curriculum e.g. Morris (2004).

• Moreover, they lack employability skills needed by employers, which are not being delivered by the current education system, but this is not appreciated by young people themselves (Dawson and Harrison, 2023)

• 88% of teachers don’t feel that they qualified to offer careers support to their students (Sutton Trust, 2022)

• The option of multiple educational pathways creates the motive to support some complex decisions with long term implications, particularly between 14-19  e.g. Marson-Smith et al (2009), UCAS (2021)

• It is well known parents strongly influence children's formative career thinking (Barnes et al, 2020), but they also feel ill-equipped to give the best advice (e.g. Reed, 2024)

• Longer term life-, wellbeing- and employment-outcomes can be positively affected by earlier career guidance e.g. Hughes (2010)

• A prevalence of career regrets (often reported in usually in the grey literature) exist amongst the working population, referencing a lack of earlier support e.g. O’Neill (2024)

• A Government review showed much good practice, but there were inadvertent biases in content and some lack of focus on individual needs (Ofsted, 2023)

The academic literature and many other publications have demonstrated CEIAG adding tangible value:

• International literature reviews showed that a clear majority of evaluation studies into career guidance provided benefits for students (Hughes, 2016) and expansive international examples for the effectiveness of career guidance (Hughes, 2024).

• Careers support can play an important role helping to overcome disadvantages and inequalities e.g. Mann et al, (2018) 
• Careers support can help to mitigate future adverse life outcomes, particularly young NEETs e.g. Careers and Enterprise Company (n.d.) 
• Students in secondary education demand more and better career guidance than they are receiving. 2 in 5 school-leavers wanted more advice. e.g. Moote (2018), UCAS (2021). Meanwhile. current secondary school students are not engaging enough with career guidance by aged 15 (Mann et al, 2024).

• Delivery of the Gatsby benchmarks has been found to equate to clear progress in the career capabilities, knowledge and career readiness of young people (e.g. Hanson et al, 2020, Careers and Enterprise Company, 2023, 2024)

• Careers support can provide tangible benefits to disadvantaged students (e.g. Robinson and Salvestrini, 2020)

• Careers guidance can provide, from the average of international studies, a cost: benefit ratio of 2.5:1 when invested in support during compulsory education (Hooley et al, 2023).

• When asked about which sources of career guidance were most helpful out of those they used, young people (secondary school to mid 20s) cite career guidance professionals and industry professionals as the most helpful, comfortably outperforming websites, friends and family etc (Prospects 2024)