On a straight word count 'careers' gets 82 mentions in Alan
Milburn's recent report, University Challenge: how Higher Education can advance
social mobility. The majority of these mentions appear in two contexts.
The first looks at the role of university careers services
in helping students 'get on' after graduation. Suggestions include: that
university careers services should be embedded within academic departments,
more universities should provide sandwich courses, careers services should work
to establish a 'skills supply chain' between higher education and local
businesses, and that careers services and businesses should develop
co-curricular activities to enhance student employability.
The second considers the negative impact of changes to
careers provision in schools. Recommendations include: further statutory
guidance for schools focusing on the importance of face-to-face guidance
delivered by accredited professionals, the inclusion of the effectiveness of
careers advice in the Ofsted school inspection framework, and the creation of
structured programmes for schools including "inspiring talks, university
visits and work experience".
So should we to be encouraged that a report into
universities' role in social mobility gives so much space to careers?
Careers information, advice and guidance (IAG), at every
stage of life, is utterly crucial to social mobility. People will not 'get on'
if they don't understand where they could be going and how to get there. While
the problem does not, of course, lie with universities alone, careers advice in
higher education is one of the areas that suffered most under the auspices of
the Connexions service, with its focus on helping those at risk of failing; a
deficit now compounded by the demise of Aimhigher.
Milburn's 82 references to careers contain all the elements
of the right response, but they are scattered with too few concrete
recommendations. There is, as he points out, a vacuum in careers provision, and
this is an opportunity missed to shout it from the rooftops and push for a
coherent and forceful response. In this, more than possibly many other areas of
education, the responsibility for provision is surely a collective one and best
delivered collectively.
It cannot – it must not – be impossible to provide a careers
IAG service which covers all bases, where schools, careers guidance
professionals, colleges, universities, charities and employers work together.
They need to help students of every age choose the right subjects and pathways
for their interests and aptitudes, and get the right exposure to experiences
which will demonstrate the range of career opportunities available and provide
the skills and contacts necessary to grasp them.
All of the necessary work is already being done somewhere,
by someone, but coverage is patchy and often follows funding streams not
greatest need. A combination of the financial crisis and the creation of
quasi-markets throughout the education system work against the sort of
cooperation required. It will require a Herculean effort of collaboration,
realistically on a regional basis.. However, once established, with clear
indications of who has responsibility for delivery, students will receive a
holistic range of provision. The different partners involved will play to their
strengths, and it might just provide a mechanism to make a reality of sharing
good practice, which we tend only to pay lip service to currently. Only then
will we see social mobility start to shift in the right direction.
Source: 31 October 2012, The Guardian, Dr Tessa Stone (Chief
Executive of Education Charity, Brightside)
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