Education and Skills Bill

Amendment No. 195 of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, seeks to ensure that the careers advice that schools provide is not limited on the grounds of disability, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or belief and that stereotyping of all kinds is robustly challenged through work experience placements. I entirely agree with what she said. Clause 66 places the young person’s interests firmly at the centre of careers education, advice and guidance and introduces a new requirement for maintained schools to have regard to statutory guidance in fulfilling their duty to provide careers education and information. We intend this guidance to include as one of its core principles an expectation that careers advice should actively challenge gender, race, disability and other stereotyping. When the Bill is enacted we will consult on the detailed content of this document and ensure that key stakeholders, such as the YWCA and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, are fully consulted. As for requiring an offer of work experience in a non-traditional sector, evidence from our 2006-07 data on work experience unsurprisingly show that most young people are fairly conventional in their choices. For example, 19,000 boys—but only 1,500 girls—went on construction placements, while 20,000 girls, compared with only 2,000 boys, took up hair and beauty placements. We should certainly not be seeking to encourage young people to go against their own careers preferences, but it is important not to stereotype. That is why the QCA’s framework for work-related learning specifically promotes the idea that learners should be given a wide range of opportunities to explore different occupations and sectors in their work experience. This underpins our policy that all young people should participate in work experience. Ninety five per cent of them do so, amounting to over 500,000 placements a year. In addition, last year’s Children’s Plan outlined measures to present young people with more exciting and challenging careers education in school. Opportunities such as taster sessions are intended to broaden their horizons. Detailed planning will start this autumn, with the intention of trying out and evaluating different approaches and writing this up as best practice for schools to be available by 2010. Some £250,000 of development funding has been budgeted for this purpose. It will then be for schools to take note of the good practice and make these opportunities available as they see fit, with the support and guidance of local 14-19 partnerships. I hope that this meets the objectives that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, set out in her opening remarks.