in this issue:
Radical re-shape of services for young people
CEG Audit 2005
Radical re-shape of services for young people
Youth matters...
The Government’s Youth Green Paper, Youth Matters, aims to radically re-shape services for young people.
Key challenges
- Engage more young people in positive activities and empower them to shape the services they receive.
- Encourage more young people to volunteer and become involved in their communities.
- Provide better information, advice and guidance to help them make informed choices about their lives.
- Provide better and more personalised intensive support for each young person who has serious problems or gets into trouble.
The recommendations for information, advice and guidance (IAG) in the paper have been influenced by the findings of the End to End Review of CEG, published alongside Youth Matters. The review looked at CEG provision in schools, colleges, work-based learning providers and Connexions. As well as affirming the importance of such provision, it identified a number of weaknesses, including fragmented and uncoordinated CEG delivery, insufficient priority given to CEG, no clear national standards, and lack of appropriate training and qualifications amongst those who deliver CEG.
In the Green Paper, CEG has been subsumed within a generic concept of IAG, which covers choices relating not only to learning and work but also to areas such as leisure, health and relationships.
Key IAG proposals:
- Minimum requirements for IAG at Years 7 and 9, and on an ongoing basis.
- A delivery programme that includes impartial face to face IAG for all young people; helplines; online advisers and e-CIAG programmes.
- A personal development curriculum covering careers education, PSHE, work-related learning, financial capability, fitness and healthy living.
- A delivery model which is funded through children’s trusts who will commission delivery provision on behalf of all schools and colleges. Connexions is effectively to disappear as a national brand, although local authorities are encouraged to retain high-performing Connexions services.
- Accountability via destination and progression targets for schools, and quality standards.
The government wants schools to take responsibility for their students’ future progression and success. It is considering a range of options including a measure based on the qualifications that Year 11 students from each school go on to achieve by age 19. Consultation will also take place on ”how we might build on existing standards for careers education and guidance” and is likely to result in national standards for IAG.
Time frame:
The new arrangements are planned to be in place by 2008.
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CEG Audit 2005
The Purpose
Towards the end of the summer term 2005, Connexions carried out a comprehensive audit of CEG provision in all Nottinghamshire schools. The audit was commissioned by 14-19 Area Strategy Groups (ASGs) and funded by Nottinghamshire LSC.
The Process
The audit questionnaire was designed in line with the National Framework for CEG and included questions on:
- delivery and quality of careers education;
- individual guidance and support offered by the institution;
- careers information and resources;
- links between CEG and other related aspects of the curriculum, including off-site provision.
In all, 84 institutions were audited with seven schools declining to participate.
Key Findings
In 38.1% of the schools responding, a careers coordinator is responsible for managing CEG, although they may also have responsibility for WRL, vocational education or PSHE, and they are most likely to be line managed by a headteacher or deputy headteacher. Only 60% of coordinators have had relevant training within the last five years.
CEG is delivered largely through the PSHE and tutorial programmes in KS3. In KS4 and 5, delivery is mainly through the PSHE programme and a collapsed or suspended timetable. However, responses showed that all institutions had some CEG input in both curriculum areas and in separately timetabled lessons.
In trying to judge the quality of a school’s CEG programme we used a scale of 1 to 3 in six different areas.
- 57% of schools offered a medium quality programme in five of the six areas;
- only 33% had a high quality programme in two of the six areas and 9% a poor quality programme in four areas.
When gathering staff feedback on the CEG programme, one fifth of schools did not gather staff feedback at all. Half of schools asked students for their feedback, although 20% did not. It was clear from the variety of responses regarding Aimhigher, that institutions do not always have a clear named cohort for each year, with many including the whole year or whole school in estimated numbers. It would seem from the responses that whilst there are many and varied activities under the banner of Aimhigher, these are not in general linked to the CEG programme.
When offering impartial advice, guidance and support, the tutor was by far the most likely member of staff students would turn to for help with education, career pathways and options, and personal issues; and the school nurse, in terms of health issues. With the exception of the monitoring of school- based IAG all institutions came within the high or medium level of quality of provision.
- KeyStage4, has between 44% and 46% of students who were involved in off site provision, most of which was Provision Plus, followed by IFP courses.
Several factors were identified that helped or hindered building links between CEG and other curriculum areas: These included shared job roles; line manager; office space; clarity of roles and responsibilities; appropriate mechanisms and time for meetings & liaison; size of school and whether split site or not.
Way Forward – what next?
The gathered data has been inputted into a database and we are now looking at a number of possible ways of enabling us to use it in supporting schools and disseminating good practice. If you would like a more detailed breakdown of the full audit results then please contact Alison Skellern on 01623 821550. We will also be contacting all schools to offer further support and training in relation to some of the issues highlighted by the audit results.
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