Education Bill

My Lords, I am grateful for this chance to return to the issue of careers guidance and the Government's proposal to give schools greater responsibility for securing appropriate support, based on the needs and circumstances of pupils. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, we had a good and extensive debate on this in Committee, and I am grateful to noble Lords, particularly to my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Sharp of Guildford, for meeting me and my honourable friend John Hayes recently to discuss some of the areas of their concern. Perhaps I may briefly set out the context in which we are implementing changes to the delivery of careers guidance. We know that the single most important factor in making sure that young people carry on and prosper in post-16 education—which is what we all want to encourage—is that they do well before they are 16. Only one in 40 students who get five good GCSEs is NEET at any point after the age of 16, compared to one in six of those who do not get five good GCSEs. Without that bedrock of achievement, the potential of adding to that, even with the best advice and guidance in the world, is quite limited. That is why our focus is on what goes on in schools. I say that to demonstrate why we have chosen to focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning in our schools, and on introducing the pupil premium to help improve the attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, about whom we have already spoken. At a time of economic difficulty, we are moving away from centrally-directed services and have protected school budgets as much as we can. We have given schools greater autonomy and the flexibility to determine the best use of resources for every pupil. We disagree with the party opposite in seeking to move the focus away from—in the jargon—inputs to outcomes, because we think that it is more important to know how a school or college does by its students than to know precisely what it does. That is the thinking behind the development of new destinations measures. We think that these will show parents and pupils how well a school or college does in helping its students on to positive destinations, whether it is in further education, higher education, apprenticeships or work. We think that those will act as a powerful tool to help those institutions to make sure they look at everything that leads to positive outcomes, from education through to, and including, careers guidance. A number of amendments in this group touch upon the important issue of the quality of careers guidance and how we can help to ensure that what is available to schools is good quality. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, about the importance of that. There is no disagreement between us. Careers guidance should be of the highest standard and offered free from the influence of any particular organisation. That is a point that was raised by a number of noble Lords who, I know, have been concerned that sometimes schools have steered children in a particular direction and not towards apprenticeships or other rival institutions. The national careers service will be required to meet a robust, high quality standard and all providers involved in the service will be expected to be accredited to the standard by April 2013. It was recently announced that this quality standard would be the revised matrix standard, and that will assist schools in making well informed decisions about which providers they want to work with. Alongside this, the Careers Profession Alliance is taking forward work to increase the professionalism of the careers workforce in response to the recommendations of the Careers Profession Task Force. An online register for members who have reached a level 6 qualification, have agreed to uphold a code of ethics and have demonstrated a strong commitment to continuing professional development, is expected to be introduced in April 2012. We spoke in Committee of the need to reduce generally the burden of guidance from the centre. There were previously 169 pages of guidance on careers for schools, and we want to reduce that. However, having listened to contributions in Committee, I recognise that it is sensible to allow scope for focused guidance to be issued to schools to support them in fulfilling their new duty. After considering the concerns raised by my noble friends Lady Sharp of Guildford and Lady Brinton at a recent meeting, I want to go further and ensure that the statutory guidance highlights to schools how they can be confident that the external support they are buying in is of the desired quality. The guidance will contain a clear description of the quality standard for careers guidance for schools in commissioning independent advice and support for their pupils. I will certainly commit to consulting on that guidance.