What do people think of Careers Advisors?

[Somethingkindaoooo]

So, for people who work in education... what are your thoughts?
I work in a few places atm, so secondary, college level, and adult work.
I generally love my job. I have many many years of experience, and I believe I do help people.
But dealing with academic staff is sometimes so challenging. I get spoken down to constantly. People don't seem to understand the role , so when I do my actual job, people often get a bit shirty.
So, I'm curious- do academic staff value careers advisors at all?

I don’t think not knowing what you want to do or not believing you have anything in terms of skills, interests or abilities has anything to do with depression.

We are talking about young teenagers

When I left school (70s) certain careers were not open to girls.
I remember asking about plumbing and long distance lorry driving (all girls private school) My career options I was offered were typing/office work or nursing or working in a bank.

I can’t type, I hate sick people and I lasted 6 weeks working in a bank and office work which was where I ended up after for several years affected my mental health

I have since done everything from burger flipping to pub work to property development and many more things on the way.

I wonder how my life would have turned out if I had been able to pursue what I first wanted to do.

When I left school (70s) certain careers were not open to girls.
I remember asking about plumbing and long distance lorry driving (all girls private school) My career options I was offered were typing/office work or nursing or working in a bank.

You can't really compare your experience of schools/career guidance with what should be happening in schools today.
However, women (and other groups) do still face barriers in the labour market. This is something that is covered on my course. Advisers that are qualified to a level 6/7 will have studied theories looking at occupational choice and will have considered how to apply this to their professional practice.

Yes, it wasn’t great but if anyone is still seeing DC to offer advice that is this bad, then they should be relieved of these duties

I agree

I do feel that in deprived areas you are more likely to find poor advice. Partly because DC aiming high isn’t the norm. It’s why DC take the wrong A levels, go to a nearby university as opposed to the best university and don’t earn as much as they could. It’s part of the issue of those needing the highest quality advice not getting it

Not true. These areas have been the focus of government policy around career guidance and are often well funded in that respect. You can't attribute the issue of students from low socio-economic attending local universities or lower ranking universities solely to poor quality career guidance. The area of widening access is multi-faceted, complex and difficult to address. Career guidance can be integral in addressing these inequalities which are often cultural and structural but you need more than a 40 min guidance interview.
This is partly why the Gatsby Benchmarks have been implemented - it's recognized that it needs to be a holistic approach across the whole schools/college. it isn't the careers advisers that have let these students down. It's the government and schools cutting corners with guidance provision.
No good careers adviser would do what you described happened in Hartlepool.

I don’t think not knowing what you want to do or not believing you have anything in terms of skills, interests or abilities has anything to do with depression

I don't mean that they don't have a formed career idea ( which is ok!)
I meant if they genuinely cannot identify any positive skills or qualities. Most teenagers can. Even if they are not interested in any particular subject area, normally they have some positive personal skills they can identify.

If they truly can't, THEN I would generally think they have other things they need to address first.

SueEllen: I said advice. Not careers advice. I don’t expect careers advisors to explain the nuances of all courses and A levels required in every detail.

You are wrong though about who goes to the best universities. Far far fewer from deprived areas. There is a culture of staying at home and being risk averse when taking out the loans. This is a very well known problem. No school or adviser should encourage such a view when it’s not in the interests of the young person.

I know the issues around university access - I know that young people from lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to to a local university and are less likely to go to an elite university despite having the appropriate qualifications. I based my whole PhD on this.
Where did I say it wasn't true?

What I said is we can't blame careers advisers for this issue.

No decent careers adviser would advise a student to stay at home/local etc. Part of the job is to raise aspirations and open up opportunities. Careers advisers don't tell people what to do or make decisions for them.
However, they should help the client be realistic. If someone says they want to be a doctor but they're failing in science this shouldn't be ignored.

The bit my 'not true* comment was aimed at was you suggesting deprived areas having access poorer advice.

I found it a waste of time

The careers leader in school does not have to be a teacher. That was the case in the tv programme. I think deprived areas are less likely to have higher qualified and trained staff within school and certainly can have a “good enough” member of staff doing the work.

Schools with a huge number of DC where parents expect good advice tend to get it. I have read what schools are meant to do - but never ever think that’s what they will do or all Ofsted reports would be Outstanding, wouldn’t they? Regulations are not the same thing as actual quality advice on the ground when starting from a low base. You are still training people. I assume that’s because there are not enough to go round. So some areas inevitably get poorer advice. I do strongly believe in high class advice but like everything else, it will be patchy and even the required independent careers advice will be judged on outcomes not high quality advice for individuals. However I’m hopeful that all DC get better advice! Like every other initiative though, I have my doubts!

The careers leader in school does not have to be a teacher

You're right they don't. Ideally they should be a senior leader who has some influence/power so they can lead and implement the careers strategy. Some schools have embraced this but sadly others haven't.
There has been training available to career leaders - some accredited courses and some non- accredited. It is up to the school to choose which training they access so some inevitably go down the easiest route. Schools in opportunity areas ( in other words deprived areas) were the first the be given the funding for this training.

Careers advisers aren't teachers either - it's a profession in it's own right.

I think deprived areas are less likely to have higher qualified and trained staff within school and certainly can have a “good enough” member of staff doing the work
This isn't necessarily true. These schools are more likely to have access to pots of money which is specifically earmarked for careers. There is a recognition that these students have a lots of structural disadvantage and may need additional support.

The Gatsby Benchmarks are a statutory requirement and careers now features on the Ofsted inspection schedule - the career leaders I work with had fed back to me that they have most definitely been getting a grilling from Ofsted when they visit.

My university has been training careers advisers for over 40 years. They graduate with an MA with professional accreditation. However, the vast majority of my students go on to work in higher education.
Schools simply don't pay enough and know they can get an adviser that is only qualified to a level 2 or 4 ( or not qualified at all) and pay them far less than a level 6 or 7 adviser would expect. As a sector we are pushing the government to specify a minimum level 6 for someone offering personal guidance - at the moment that is only a recommendation.
Rather than blaming careers advisers we should be actually blaming the government for de-professionalizing the sector and and not funding career guidance sufficiently.

I know exactly what you are saying and I agree with you. In a former job, the careers service for our county was run by colleagues. I knew many of them very well and actually a lot of them had been teachers. They had then retrained to be careers advisers.

I don’t believe the s Ofsted threat works for all schools. As I said before, ofsted looks at all sorts of things but it doesn’t make school leadership get everything right! That’s why schools fail their DC. I’m assuming the money for careers is ring fenced. If it’s not schools will find a raft of other things to spend it on. In addition I do think it’s difficult to evaluate how successful careers advice actually is. I can see what is expected but individuals make decisions for all sorts of reasons and I would like to think all DC will be encouraged to go to the very best university, college, apprenticeship or job they can possibly get but even with better careers advice, this may not happen when life intervenes. Even being risk averse to the student loan is a barrier to some. So if university is a measure of success, it needs to be which university. Not any old university. More nuanced stats should be looked at to see if DC have actually made the right decisions all the way along. Good luck with what you are doing though and I do support it.

I get a lot of ex-teachers on my course as well as people who had considered being teacher but decided against it but still want to work in schools.

You are right - it is very hard to evaluate. There are so many influences on a person's career decisions and career journey not to mention the part luck and chance have to play.

Those working in schools have a number of issues to contend with - the pay is poor, it's often not a priority so time and money is scarce. They will also take unqualified staff or those with minimal qualifications and don't invest in their CPD.

Higher education on the other hand is completely different - they tend to ask for a level 7 qualification and if they take someone unqualified they will train them up. Employability is a key strategic priority so it's usually well funded. It pays better too - an employability adviser can earn £30k, careers consultants can earn up to 50k and a director can earn 80kplus.
Compare that to schools paying £19k.
There's a lot of work that needs to be done in the school sector.

Rather than blaming careers advisers we should be actually blaming the government for de-professionalizing the sector and and not funding career guidance sufficiently

Hear hear! I get so angry when I think of it. It is a vicious circle: its underfunded, so good people leave the profession, leaving advisors who are poorly/ untrained. They do a poor job, which further decreases people's perceptions....

The LAs fund the schools. The money doesn’t all come from the government. A lot comes from Council tax. The schools have delegates budgets and they choose what they want to spend the money on. Often initiatives have ring fenced money from the government but schools have decided over many years that high quality careers advice was not a priority. It’s not a recent phenomenon. Of course it’s short sighted.

It was the coalition government that decided careers wasn't a priority with its 2011 education act.

Prior to this career guidance was provided by local authority funded careers services. This act removed the duty from these services and placed it with the schools with no additional funding. This meant schools were responsible for sourcing and paying for careers support. Some schools continued to use their local careers service and some employed them directly. Others decided it was cheaper to use existing unqualified staff and pay for a computerised quiz.
We also saw a rise in people calling themselves careers coaches (and various other career related names) despite having no qualifications and little experience. Schools were free to employ these if they so wished.
This act also removed the statutory duty in relation to work experience. This meant there was no funding or support for this - in lots of schools this was a full time job.

Career guidance in schools was unregulated and underfunded. Careers services had to make loads of people redundant - lots of these advisers were highly qualified but schools didn't want them because they were too expensive.

All of this was also on the back of Connexions which was the first step in de-professionalising the sector. Lots of good careers advisers left because they were suddenly expected to offer advice on not just careers but housing, benefits, contraception, drugs etc.....they also lost the job title and suddenly had to call themselves personal advisers.

So I think we can place much of the blame at the feet of various governments.

The careers budget was delegated to schools here. They chose to spend it wisely or not. This has been the case with every single budget delegates to schools. That includes SEN peripatetic services, Ed psychs, music tuition - the list is endless. It’s just another service that schools should buy in but some didn’t bother.

Which is why statutory requirements should be made clear and leave little room for interpretation.
It is better at the moment as schools have a statutory duty to meet the Gatsby Benchmarks and have a career leader in post but there are still some schools who are doing the bare minimum and it's not good enough.
There is funding to train career leaders available - they'll fund the training and give schools a bursary upon completion. There are some great courses out there - up to level 7 and it costs the school nothing yet there are still 100's of places left on these courses.

I do agree that’s not good enough. There is talk on the radio about deprived areas in the north where there are a greater proportion of failing schools and the likelihood their DC will fall further behind. Maybe funding should be targeted at these schools and it made mandatory that suitable staff attend the training? The mountain deprived DC have to climb has just got a lot steeper.

We booked a slot for a careers adviser at parents evening for DS. The school paid for a firm to do this. It was a complete waste of time, we were hoping she would ask a little about about his interests and subjects but she literally just said 'what do yo want to do?' He has sort of got himself in a route of law without really thinking about it. We were hoping she might broaden his options but we came away no better off.

And ten minutes was not nearly enough to get anywhere.

In Scotland we are funded directly from government so offer a consistent service across the country. Obviously budgets are squeezed and priorities change depend on government ideas!

bubblesbuddy I'd really like to government to make things mandatory but they won't. The sector pushed and pushed to get a minimum level of qualification added to the careers strategy - the suggest a minimum level 6 but refused to say it was statutory.
I also think they need to be clearer about the career leader role and state the minimum number of hours needed to to the job - i know one school who dedicate one hour a fortnight for the career leader to do that element of their job. It's impossible to do a good job in that time.

JustHereWithMyPopcorn You can't do career guidance in 10 mins - that's a fact. Not to mention parents evenings are not the time or place. Career guidance interviews should be at least 30 mins and in a confidential space - ideally without parents present.

It's a good idea to have careers advisers present at parents evenings but they are there to give information, signpost to further help and book appointments for a more appropriate time.

This is a huge problem for the sector - some people have seen a way of making money out of this. They approach schools with a flashy website and all the talk. Schools are then wasting money on bringing in organisations like this who promise guidance in 10 mins but actually do more harm than good. I'd complain if I were you.

weebarra It's so much simpler in Scotland! When i talk to my counterparts at Scottish universities it's like we operate in completely different worlds sometimes!!

I had a career guidance meeting at school. From what I remember the guy typed what I thought I wanted to do as a 14 year old into a computer and came up with a list of qualifications I needed! I could do that myself.
A lot of people change their minds regarding their careers between childhood and adulthood. I think a discussion about careers would have been more useful, but even then I am unsure as to how useful it is given so many people end up doing different things. Apart from a few very driven friends who always wanted to be doctors / lawyers no one I know of ended up doing the jobs they thought they would in their teens.

DrDreReturns There is far more acknowledgement of this now. Old career theory focused on people choosing from a limited selection of jobs and 'having a job for life'. There is now much more focus on career management skills. We need to teach young people to navigate their career journey which is likely to involve a number of career changes and may involve jobs that don't even exist yet.