Writing in the Education Guardian on 29 January, Watts concludes that in England the careers service is in 'disarray' and that the developments in guidance provision are moving in the wrong direction.
The full article as published;
Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children, schools and families, has stated that one of the four building blocks for the successful raising of the education participation age is "advice and guidance that helps all young people make the right choices". This should be supported by "clear specifications for local authorities to provide every young person with guidance on the educational choices available to them".
He deserves credit for recognising the importance of advice and guidance. But he has a lot to do if this building block is to be in place by 2010 - the year when the first cohort of those who have to stay on will be making their post-14 choices.
In the first place, Balls will need to recognise that choices of learning pathways need to be viewed not just as educational choices but as career choices. They need therefore to be made in a career perspective.
This suggests that leaving responsibility for providing the advice and guidance to schools and colleges is not sufficient. The 2004 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Career Guidance Policy Review referred to the tendency for guidance services to focus "on educational decision-making, often with little attention to the occupational and longer-term career choices that flow from particular educational pathways". This was one of the key rationales for the active involvement in schools and colleges of external agencies closer to the labour market.
A further reason for the involvement of such agencies is impartiality. There is irrefutable evidence that many schools bias their advice and guidance in favour of their own provision.
It is because of such considerations that careers education and guidance provision in the UK has been based on a partnership between schools or colleges and an external service. Institutions have ongoing contact with students and links into the curriculum. The external service can offer professional career guidance expertise, links with the labour market, and impartiality. Together, they can provide a high-quality programme.
In the OECD review, the partnership approach emerged as the strongest model. Other countries have either a school-based service (eg the US ) or an external service (eg France , Germany ). The UK has had the merits of both.
The partnership model is still strongly in place in Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland . In England , however, it is in disarray. The Careers Service was subsumed some years ago into Connexions, addressed mainly at young people who had fallen out of education, training and employment, or were at risk of doing so. Careers advisers were replaced by personal advisers, with a broad remit. Only two in five young people are now seen individually by a personal adviser, who may or may not be a trained careers adviser.
Now Connexions is itself being subsumed into an integrated youth support service, under local authority control. Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) is defined very broadly. As from April 1 2008 , its funding ceases to be ring-fenced. Already there are widespread reports of cuts by cash-strapped local authorities.
The only lever the government has developed to sustain current provision is its new IAG quality standards. It has included provision in its new education and skills bill to cover these standards. But without systematic support from well-informed Ofsted inspections, it seems unlikely it can make them bite.
The risk is that England is moving towards a school-based advice and guidance system, without admitting it. If this is what Ed Balls wants, then he should say so, and do what needs to be done to make such a system work.
But it is much the weaker model. We still have the external service in place - eroded and at risk of terminal decline. A reaffirmation of the partnership model, and of the crucial importance of access by all students aged 13-19 to impartial career guidance from a specialist, externally based careers adviser, would be immensely welcome. But we need it now: time is short.
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