Did you read Ofsted’s recent report Getting Ready for Work? In measured, low-key language, it paints a shocking picture.

Ofsted set out to investigate “the availability and effectiveness of enterprise education and work-related learning for pupils in secondary schools”. What it found was that only four out of 40 schools visited - a paltry 10 per cent - were doing it properly. In one school, the headteacher was quoted as saying that preparing pupils for the world of work was “a luxury we can’t afford”.

And this is just the start of a litany of findings that show how far the secondary school sector has retreated - encouraged by the neglect of successive governments - from delivering a coherent work-related curriculum. Most schools have no coordinated planning of enterprise education. Three-quarters don’t monitor its effectiveness or impact; 42 per cent don’t offer work experience. The involvement of local businesses in a school is heavily dependent on the contacts of teachers and parents.

The findings on apprenticeships are equally bleak, if unsurprising. While 68 per cent of schools are good at promoting apprenticeships, their efforts are typically aimed at pupils who are “of middle/low ability and exhibit challenging behaviour”. At many schools, apprenticeship knowledge is “poor to non-existent”.

Far from being a luxury, preparing young people for work is a necessity

In one school, more than 90 per cent of pupils reported that their parents would find it “unacceptable” for them to do an apprenticeship. One of the key reasons given by pupils for not considering this route was: “Going to university is what everyone does and it is shown in the media as normal.”

So, if secondary schools aren’t preparing young people for work, then who is? Clearly it must be FE colleges and universities. But wait a minute! Colleges don’t even get them before they are 16 and universities when they are 18. By that time, they have already made all sorts of choices, which may or may not have been the right ones for their career prospects.

Those young people who do have access to information, advice and guidance about the world of work through, in Ofsted’s phrase, “a personal network of teachers and parents”, have a huge advantage. To put it bluntly, if you are born into a family with good informal networks, you are far more likely to make better choices. If you’re not, hard luck.

So much for social mobility. But also, so much for the prospects of UK business. Even with the best of intentions, careers advice from parents is likely to be a generation out of date.

Ofsted is right to raise the alarm. Far from being a luxury we can’t afford, preparing young people for work is surely a fundamental necessity we can’t afford to do without.

Andy Forbes is principal of the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London