An amendment to the Technical and Further Education Bill moved by the Edge Foundation’s chair, Lord Baker, was accepted in the House of Lords last week. This will enable a variety of training providers, FE colleges, career colleges, studio schools and university technical colleges (UTCs) to visit schools to share their offer with pupils.

While the narrative in the education sector has focused on this being an imposition on schools, and cites their reluctance to “lose” students to other institutions, I think, more importantly, it highlights the paucity of careers information, advice and guidance currently available to young people.

In education, as in many things, one size does not fit all; the diversity of career pathways available now should offer a greater breadth of opportunity for young people and a better prospect of finding the right fit. However, the failure to develop a strategy - or generate sufficient funding - to ensure all young people can access comprehensive careers guidance means many young people are steered along a default route of A levels and university, regardless of whether it offers the best pathway to fulfilling their potential and developing a rewarding career.

‘Drifting into a career by default’

The first wave of results from Edge’s own longitudinal study of FE learners, which we published towards the end of last year, found that the majority of young people wanted more careers information, particularly from employers. The data suggests there is a significant number of young people drifting into subjects by default as they feel ill-equipped to choose more focused courses.

As our curriculum has narrowed - and continues to narrow under the confines of the English Baccalaureate - so has young people’s awareness of the relevance of learning to the world of work. Schools are under tremendous financial pressure, and finding the resources to deliver careers information, advice and guidance can be a challenge. Inevitably, teachers are not equipped with the breadth of knowledge about apprenticeships or technical training courses that you would expect from a trained careers adviser.

As part of our mission to raise the status of technical and professional learning, the Edge Foundation works with and supports many organisations - including FE colleges, career colleges and UTCs - which offer an educational model that can equip young people with the skills they need to fulfil their potential and establish a fruitful career, but critically the skills that our digital economy demands.

Lee Nicholls is executive director of Activate Learning, a group in Oxford that includes three FE colleges, two UTCs and a studio school. Hearing the news about the amendment, Lee told me: “The government’s Technical and Further Education Bill makes clear its desire to put technical routes in education on a par with their academic equivalents. Careers advice is central to realising this ambition. Young people need clear guidance and access to representatives from the full breadth of further education provision. That way they can make informed decisions about the best next steps for them, with a focus on mapping out their future career pathway.

“As a group of schools and colleges offering technical programmes, we welcome any measures that will help young people to be more aware of the wealth of opportunities available to them.”

Of course, I think Lee is absolutely right and it is even more critical for low-attainers, who by virtue of typically being entered for only six GCSEs, will be restricted to the limited EBacc diet of academic subjects with no opportunities to develop creative, practical or technical skills, like their higher-achieving peers.

Potential of apprenticeships

The government sets great store by the potential of apprenticeships and technical education to deliver social mobility and improve life chances for the most disadvantaged young people. It is more ambivalent about the career opportunities they can offer to all young people. The demands of our labour market are changing rapidly and it is groups like Activate Learning that are responding to the needs of the economy for expertise in digital, engineering, computing and creative skills.

The concept of the marketplace in education is a discussion for another day, but this amendment is not about competing for pupils, filling quotas or attracting funding. Good schools have the best interests of their pupils at heart and want their pupils to be aware of the full range of alternatives open to them. Our focus must be on helping young people to reach their right destination, not trapping them in a particular institution for administrative ease or funding reasons.

It’s about equality of choice and opportunity and making information available to all our young people so they find their own pathway to success.

Alice Barnard is chief executive of the Edge Foundation and tweets as @ukEdgeCEO

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