Secretary of State for Education backs greater involvement for careers in schools

Rt Hon Damian Hinds MP, spoke strongly to Sky News about the need to offer young people in schools a broader range of post-16 options.

He told Sky Politics presenter, Adam Boulton: “I think it’s really quite important that from quite a young age actually at school, that children can have access to a wide range of career options, because it helps them to think about their future, and not be constrained perhaps by their own circumstances.”

Hinds goes on to talk about the need to link up businesses with schools, offer work experience placements, and use school assemblies to share with young people, the “full range” of opportunities available to them. He concludes: “..and also, they can quite often see how the subjects they’re studying are actually directly relevant to what they might want to do after school.”

At Futures, we have been working hard to find all means of engaging with the young people we work with, to highlight the range of opportunities available to them.

We discuss and advise on a vast range of alternatives to the ever-popular A-Levels and University route, showcasing apprenticeships, highlighting credible local job and training vacancies, and talking through potential careers paths that may not have even been considered before.

Futures Director of Programmes, Paul Price-Hazlehurst, said: “Last year the Government released statutory guidance, which gave schools a greater responsibility to provide quality careers advice to its students. This presented an opportunity to organisations like ourselves to work with the new careers leads within schools to develop better ways to educate and inform young people about all the options available to them. This is something we’re already doing, but there’s still a way to go.

“We believe it is a young person’s right to be presented with all the facts before they make a decision, given the opportunity to understand what career options are out there, what they look like in reality and what progression and growth they offer.

“The university route is not for everyone, yet so many young people are guided down that path, without many other options explained to them. That’s where we come in, and I feel we can have a real impact on the future choices of the younger generation.”