Education and Skills Bill

The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, would require the Secretary of State to commission an independent review into the effectiveness of the provision of careers advice in England and the appropriateness of a single all-age advice and guidance service as established in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I shall take the two issues in turn—the review, and the appropriateness of a single service. Reviews on this subject have already been undertaken; for example, there was the Report of the End to End Review of Careers Education and Guidance, which reported to my department in July 2005, and the review of skills from the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, published in December 2006, which addressed careers services for adults. We are now implementing the findings of these reviews to build on good practice and to ensure that those areas in which information, advice and guidance have been found to be weak are brought up to the standard of the best. Secondly, we have listened carefully to those who have called for an all-age careers service. Officials from my department and from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills have held a series of exploratory discussions with key stakeholders on this issue over the past year. However, while we are fully convinced of the case for an all-age careers strategy, we are not convinced that the introduction of an all-age careers service is the best way forward. Adults and young people have different needs and issues to address and we believe that these require different solutions. On the adult side, the Government accepted the recommendation of my noble friend Lord Leitch to establish a new, universal adult careers service, bringing together the existing adult face-to-face, telephone and online delivery and working in partnership with Jobcentre Plus in England, to be operational from 2010-11. Key features of the new adult service will be supporting the delivery of skills accounts, improving effectiveness by better needs identification through skills health checks, providing better integrated financial support for learning for those with the lowest skills and qualifications, greater use of online and telephone support, where appropriate, and meeting individual needs within a differentiated service reflecting government priorities to help the unemployed and the low skilled. The Government will continue to work with partners to develop a joined-up advice service, covering issues such as housing, employment rights, childcare and financial and personal advice and support, as well as jobs and skills. The consultation paper that we have issued, Raising Expectations: Enabling the System to Deliver, sets out that the new skills funding agency will be responsible for managing, setting targets and service specifications for the adult advancement and careers service, which will be fully operational in 2010-11. We expect the full new service to provide skills health checks and action plans for up to half a million workless people and a further half a million skills health checks and action plans for adults in work, targeting those with low skills or those who need to retrain to progress. We are providing additional resources, rising to at least £50 million per year by 2010-11, to help to develop the new integrated employment and skills system, in particular the development of the new service and skills accounts. We will continue to fund Connexions at around £470 million over the next two years, which is double the pre-Connexions service budget for the careers service. The Report of the End to End Review of Careers Education and Guidance, published in 2005, gave a broadly favourable verdict on Connexions. It said: "““A summary of available evidence on the progress of Connexions in March 2004 found that the service was making an impact, especially for young people who require intensive support. It has measurably reduced the number of young people in the NEET group. Young people report that the service makes a real difference to their progress through information, guidance and ongoing support. The University of Southampton’s research found Connexions was the most important intervening agency for the majority of pupils””." That broadly favourable view of Connexions is sustained by stakeholders and surveys, which have been broadly positive, and by Ofsted, which in 28 inspections of Connexions partnerships has rated 89 per cent as satisfactory or better, with 60 per cent rated as good or better. That is why we have made provisions for local authorities to be under a duty to comply with key elements of existing Connexions practice, including use of the brand itself and minimum qualifications for personal advisers. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, specifically mentioned web-based services. It is worth noting in this context that Connexions Direct is an award-winning national helpline and website that currently provides services to young people. It complements the face-to-face delivery of local providers of information, advice and guidance to young people and the local area prospectus. Connexions Direct offers accurate, up-to-date information on a range of teen issues. The latest figures show that more than 160,000 young people visit the site on a weekly basis. It has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from young people. Clause 159 ensures that Connexions Direct will continue to be available to young people. However, we are certainly not complacent and we are alive to the issue of improvements to advice and guidance, particularly to meet the needs of students when making decisions about diplomas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned. Before the delivery of diplomas for 14 to 19 year-olds can go ahead, the consortia will have to pass through a rigorous gateway process to demonstrate that they will deliver high-quality information, advice and guidance. We recognise that the reforms under way for 14 to 19 year-olds will present a challenge to information, advice and guidance providers. We will need to focus on continuous improvements and bringing the performance of all providers up to the highest standards. I acknowledge the points made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Verma and Lady Sharp, about the quality of schools’ careers services that are not specifically geared to those at the more challenging end of the spectrum. I am talking about the more challenging in respect of their propensity to engage in education and training; of course all young people may have challenging needs for advice and guidance, whatever their propensity to continue in education and training. That is why we will require local authorities to have regard to guidance that clearly sets out our expectations of the information, advice and guidance services for young people that we expect authorities to deliver. We are alive to the need for continuous improvement in this area but, for the reasons that I have given, we are not persuaded that a single, all-age service is necessarily the best way forward. We have conducted significant reviews of Connexions in recent years and we do not believe that a review, of itself, is likely to be a lever to drive up standards further.