Dame Ruth Silver is to chair a new careers profession taskforce which will ensure that professionals in the field are skilled and motivated to give all young people high-quality advice.
The Careers Profession Taskforce will focus on creating a careers workforce fit for the 21st century. It will look at a number of areas including:
- recruitment and retention of well-qualified careers professionals
- ensuring that the profession is diverse and reflects the make-up of the working population
- whether all career specialists should hold a specialist qualification
Schools Minister Iain Wright said: "The Taskforce under Dame Ruth will play a key role in ensuring that the next generation of careers professionals can deliver our ambition that all young people get the best advice so that they unlock their potential. I am delighted that she has agreed to accept our invitation."
Dame Ruth Silver said: "Our careers professionals are vital to ensuring all young people get the good advice they need to make well-informed, thought-through choices and plans that enable them to progress smoothly into further learning and work, now and in the future.
"Developing the capacity of the workforce to deliver effective programmes of careers education and personalised IAG for the future is central to success.
"IAG and effective careers advice is also key to improving social mobility and reducing inequality by helping those from disadvantaged backgrounds to raise their horizons and by giving them the support they need to fulfil their potential. There is no reason why any child should not receive that support."
A recent Ofsted evaluation of the implementation of the 14-19 reforms based on 16 local authority areas and 70 secondary and special schools, found that the quality of Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG), provided to young people was good or better in 12 of the 16 areas visited.
A survey in 2009 found that 83 per cent of young people rated the IAG received from Connexions as very/fairly good.
Quality, Choice and Aspiration, the IAG strategy published by DCSF in October 2009, recognised that the quality of provision varies throughout the country.
That is why the work of the Task Force is so important as Government looks for new ways to modernise and improve our careers profession and the service it offers.
The Government wants to see the quality of IAG improve across the whole country and so will review the quality and effectiveness of local authorities' delivery of IAG in 2011.
This Taskforce's work will make an important contribution to developing the skills of the workforce and the delivery of IAG in preparation for that review.
The Taskforce will have 15 other members, including ICG President Deirdre Hughes, drawn from professional bodies, delivery bodies, employers and academia. DCSF will soon be publishing a full list of members alongside the terms of reference.
Last week's Government response to the Milburn Report demonstrates the range of action from the New Opportunities White Paper, Higher Education Framework, Schools White Paper as well as the IAG Strategy to improve social mobility and fair access to HE and the professions.
We are introducing an IAG Guarantee, as part of the new Pupil and Parent Guarantees, from September 2011, with clear routes of redress for parents where complaints about failures in delivering the Guarantees have not been properly addressed at local level.
Dame Ruth Silver biography
- Founding Chair of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service since March 2008.
- until summer 2009 she was the principal of Lewisham College, a large inner-city, vocational further education, double Beacon college in south east London serving a diverse and multi-cultural population.
- Lewisham College received an 'outstanding' Ofsted Inspection report in May 2006
- she was a founder member on the new London Skills and Employment Board
- she is an adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills
- she co-chairs the All parliamentary Skills Commission.
- she is a trustee of the Edge Foundation devoted to raising the status of vocational learning
- she was the founding chief assessor for the Principals Qualifying Programme and she is visiting professor on educational developments at London South Bank University
- she holds a number of national posts linked to learning in further education
- in June 2006, Ruth Silver was awarded a damehood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to further education.
- she was awarded a CBE in 1997
- she holds Honorary Doctorates from London South Bank University and the University of Southampton and a Fellowship from City and Guilds.
Source: DCSF | 
