Consultation Findings: Evidencing the Impact of Impartial Careers Advice

Between March-April 2024, Career Connect ran a national consultation (‘Careers Advice is Vital for our Future: Assessing the Evidence’).  This consultation sought to understand perspectives across the careers sector on the current state of evidence, demonstrating the impact of independent and impartial Careers education, information, advice, and guidance (CEIAG).

Our consultation asked four questions:

1. If there were no impartial and independent CEIAG (Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance), what does current evidence tell us about the impact that this would have on: – How prepared young people are to make decisions that affect their future education and employment outcomes that are aligned with their aspirations? – The longer-term employment outcomes for young people? – Specific vulnerable groups that would be most seriously affected, how, and why?
2. What do you think are the biggest gaps in our current understanding of the impact of professional CEIAG, and what are the consequences of this lack of evidence? We are particularly interested in thoughts on gaps across life stages and populations, including: – CEIAG provided to school-aged young people. – Support provided to those during transitions from school to post sixteen provision. – Young people most at risk of poor education and employment outcomes.
3. Thinking about these areas of weakness, what do you think the top three priorities should be for research and evidence for the professional CEIAG sector?
4. Who has a role to play in filling these evidence gaps, and what are each best placed to contribute?

The results and research priorities identified by the consultation were discussed at a roundtable discussion between members of the House of Lords and representatives from the major national sectoral bodies for Careers on May 15, 2024.

Key Findings:

1. The Gatsby benchmarks provide a framework for good evidence to be generated about the scope and scale of CEIAG delivery to school-aged young people.  The absence of a similar framework for provision to young people aged 16-24 who are NEET is a barrier to evidence generation demonstrating impactful practice.
2. There is reasonably good evidence of the immediate, positive impact of CEIAG for young people being ‘career ready’ and reducing their risk of becoming NEET aged 16-24 years. There is, however, much less evidence about the long-term impact on social mobility or for specific groups that we know to be more vulnerable to employment outcomes later in life.
3. While there is good evidence around scope and scale of provision and shorter-term impact, there is much less evidence about the conduct of professional careers practice, new ways of delivering guidance, and practice that best supports the needs of young people that are more vulnerable to poor employment and career outcomes in later life.
4. The most common priorities are:
   • Empirical evidence allowing stronger models and estimates of the long-term impact of careers support for young people.
   • Stronger data on how Gatsby 8 is being met and the impact of advisers having L6/L7 qualifications as set out in the Career Guidance Guarantee.
   • The need to development new, evidence-based models of delivery of quality careers guidance and support.
   • Greater use and accumulation of evidence from standardised measures of the short-term outcomes of careers support, and their deployment to understand short-term outcomes for those most vulnerable to poorer outcomes later in life.
5. National bodies, universities, and delivery organisations all have a role to play in conducting research and filling evidence gaps, but the sector would benefit from greater alignment of effort and more collaborative working, supporting more work at scale.

The Next Steps…

Career Connect held a one-day workshop in September 2024 with our eight local authority partners in the North West to explore current best practice.

We also held a workshop at the Career Development Institute national conference in November 2024, to present and validate the emerging framework, together with the Education Development Trust.

We will be doing more over the coming months to develop and promote the framework with the aim of ensuring that all young people aged 16-17 can benefit from the new Youth Guarantee. We will also be releasing a report on transitions from school to post-16 provision for the growing number of young people with social, emotional, and mental health conditions.

Download the Full Report