Progress towards a National Careers Service for England
The National Careers Service Advisory Group, which was formed to advise government on its proposals to develop and implement a National Careers Service for England, met on Friday 7 October 2011. AGCAS was represented, with Communications and Marketing Manager, Chris Jackson, standing in for President, Anne-Marie Martin.
The following notes are not official minutes, but brief points that may be of particular interest to AGCAS members:
• Launch of National Careers Service (NCS) is scheduled for April 2012.
• Telephone helpline In September, the contract for the young people's helpline was awarded to the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). There is now a single, public-facing helpline number (0800 100 900), with callers directed to either the young people's helpline or the existing Next Step helpline, depending on their age. (The young people's careers helpline caters for those between the ages of 13 and 19, 'plus those aged up to 25 with learning difficulties disabilities').
• Lifelong Learning Accounts have been launched and adults are already being encouraged to open accounts. The SFA and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) are working on proposals for future development of the accounts. It is aimed to come to an agreement by the end of 2011.
• Education Bill The bill has reached its report stage, which is expected to take at least four days, spread over weeks beginning 17 and 24 October 2011.
• Quality Standard The revised matrix standard will be the quality standard for the National Careers Service. Contractors will normally be expected to achieve the standard by April 2012.
• Careers Profession Alliance (CPA) A paper outlining progress was tabled, but this did not include details of how individual membership organisations saw the future of the CPA.
• Quality in Careers Standard and Register of Practitioners Careers England has been working on proposals for a new Quality in Careers standard, a proposed 'kitemark' for programme providers (including education institutions and training providers). A paper will be tabled at a future meeting of this group. The aim would be for it to dovetail with matrix and any Register of Practitioners (ROP) for individuals developed by the CPA or others.
There was some discussion about the qualification level, which might be required for a ROP, with a number of members of the group expressing a view that there would not be enough people at or likely to be supported towards Level 6 to make this a viable requirement. BIS expressed support in principle, but made it clear that it remained very unlikely that either the standard or the register would be compulsory as far as government was concerned.
• LMI Work is underway to explore a number of government data sets, including those of HESA, the National Pupil Database, the Labour Force Survey and HM Revenue and Customs being linked and put on open-access. The group will be updated as the work progresses.
• STEM Careers Learning Module Jenny Bimrose made a short presentation about a University of Warwick module, due to be launched by the end of November.
The next meeting will be on 8 November 2011.
Tags: national careers service NCS lifelong learning LMI Matrix all-age careers service CPA careers profession alliance education bill quality equality standard register of practitioners next step connexions young people
Created on: 10 October 2011
Last updated: 10 October 2011