This Education and Employers Taskforce research seminar, kindly hosted by UKCES, reported on an action research project conducted in two schools in East London, which aimed to enhance careers work for Years 7-9 in the context of the new requirements for schools to provide careers guidance.
Presentation: Enhancing School-based Careers Work for Years 7-9
Full report: Enhancing School-based Careers Work for Years 7-9
Abstract: The Education Act 2011 handed over responsibility for providing careers guidance in England to schools. In the past, Careers Education Information Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) was the responsibility of local authority funded Careers Services, and from 2001-11, of Connexions, the external holistic support service whose remit was to provide all kinds of IAG to young people. Schools are now required to ensure that pupils from Year 8 to Year 13 have access to ‘independent’ and ‘impartial’ careers guidance. Many schools have struggled to adapt to the changes with no extra funds being provided to fulfil the new requirements.
This seminar reported on an action research project conducted in two schools in East London, which aimed to enhance careers work for Years 7-9 in the context of the new requirements. The project was funded by the Greater London Authority and conducted by researchers from the University of East London in 2013-14. The project found that whilst there is much that schools can do, through internal change, to enhance their school-based careers programme, the new arrangements have left them with requirements which they have neither the funding, experience, expertise nor networks to fulfil. Focussing on the disparity between the statutory requirements and what schools are actually achieving in terms of careers work, the paper argues for more government support for the development of broader careers education programmes, training for both careers coordinators and teaching staff, and support for the development of better links between schools and local employers.
Biography
Dr Charlotte Chadderton
Senior Research Fellow, Cass School of Education and Communities
http://www.uel.ac.uk/research/profiles/cass/charlottechadderton/
Dr Charlotte Chadderton is Senior Research Fellow in Education at the Cass School of Education and Communities at the University of East London where she has worked since 2010 since completing her PhD at the Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University. Charlotte researches issues of social justice and inequalities in education. She has an ongoing interest in the field of school to work transitions, vocational education and CEIAG, and issues of equity and discrimination in these areas. She is currently leading ‘A longitudinal study of young women’s transitions in Tower Hamlets in an age of austerity’, (£25k), funded by the Aldgate and Allhallows Foundation and is also conducting research which explores the under-representation of minority ethnic young people in apprenticeships in England and Germany. Other projects she has worked on in this field have been funded by the European Commission, (CEDEFOP), the Economic and Social Research Council, the Lifelong Learning Network and the Learning and Skills Council.