Careers advice is ‘affecting school results’

RELYING on schools to deliver careers advice has created a postcode lottery in the quality of guidance being offered which is harming social mobility, according to a report published today.

New research shows a link between the quality of career advice a school provides and the success of its pupils at both GCSE and A-level.

For the past two years schools and colleges have had a legal duty to provide careers advice after the coalition took this responsibilty away from the Connexions service.

The Government also created a new National Careers Service in 2012 which offers telephone and web based advice for students.

The Sutton Trust charity, which works to promote social mobility, warned today that changes had resulted in “a decline in the quality and quantity of the career guidance available to young people in England and the emergence of a ‘postcode lottery’ where some young people have access to much better career guidance than others.”

It said the legal duty placed on schools from 2012 was accompanied by weak statutory guidance and little help or support.

Now the Sutton Trust is calling on the Government to strengthen the National Careers Service so that it provides face to face advise to students who need it.

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