Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 169: 169: Clause 54, page 30, line 9, leave out ““services”” and insert ““information, advice and guidance about education and career opportunities”” The noble Baroness said: If we are to guide young people in the right direction, we must be explicit about the nature of that guidance. That is the point of Amendment No. 169. Instead of the clause referring simply to services, the nature of the new statutory obligations should be made clearer. In that sense, this is a probing amendment to test the Government’s commitment to, and understanding of, the need to offer the right range of advice and guidance on what is available to young people. I am concerned that Connexions is not the best means of providing the range of advice necessary to assist young people. I do not want unfairly to criticise Connexions; it does very good work. However, it is asked to do too much good work. I addressed the issue when I moved Amendment No. 111, so I do not need to repeat every point I made then. The gist of what I said was that Connexions is now almost too universal. It is not equipped to provide specialist careers advice. An all-age careers service that sat alongside Connexions, dedicated to advising on career choices, as the amendment labels them, would be a much better way of providing the advice and guidance required. Amendment No. 170 attempts to refine that further, so that young people with special educational needs have services tailored to their needs. Again, we have previously discussed the importance of helping young people with special needs. They should not be allowed to fall through the net because we have not done enough to help them. Amendment No. 176 reflects our desire to support high-quality careers advice and a highly professional careers service. By tying in the various strands of careers advice, we hope to create a strong interconnected system which provides high-quality advice for everyone who needs it. I beg to move.