How are you feeling about the new Ofsted requirements for Career Leaders?
As a Career Leader, have you been confused by the new Ofsted requirements for careers departments in schools and colleges?
Are you struggling with understanding what they mean for your school or college?
All Career leaders are having to think creatively about how to support their student’s future pathways and to ensure that they’re meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks by 2020.
To add to this, the current climate doesn’t make implementing best practice easy.
The following will help you to understand what it means to be Ofsted outstanding and how the criteria translates to best practice.
What criteria do Career Leaders need to know to become OFSTED outstanding
- Career guidance should be impartial and of high quality. It should help pupils to make informed decisions about which courses are suited to their academic needs and aspirations.
- Pupils should have a clear understanding of their next stage of education and should be exceptionally well-prepared for it.
What career guidance outcomes do Career Leaders need to achieve to become Ofsted Outstanding?
- A stable careers programme
- Higher numbers of pupils progressing to positive destinations such as apprenticeships, technical routes, sixth form colleges, FE colleges, university or employment
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools
How do Career Leaders ensure a Stable Careers Programme?
To ensure a stable careers programme, all Career Leaders should be working towards achieving all eight of the Gatsby Benchmarks, achieving these by 2020 (See Fig. 1 below)
Fig.1 Gatsby Benchmarks
How do Career Leaders ensure that higher numbers of pupils progress to positive destinations?
Career Leaders should ensure that 76% of all pupils have:
- used LMI to make well informed and realistic decisions
- a clear understanding of how the curriculum is linked to careers
- had more than one meaningful encounter with employers and further education and higher education providers
- had a meaningful experience of a workplace
- the opportunity to access 1:1 guidance from a qualified careers adviser
- achieved a positive destination outcome (further education, apprenticeship, job)
This can be very difficult for the host careers team to effectively achieve without additional support.
How Career Inspiration works with Career Leaders:
I have industry experience in Teaching and Careers Guidance (level 6) and therefore understand that both teachers and the host careers teams have multiple priorities and increasingly finite resources available. This can be limiting for a school or college who wants to achieve OFSTED outstanding as it perpetuates difficulties in working collaboratively to design services to meet the required Gatsby Benchmarks and Ofsted Standard Requirements.
The OFSTED readiness programme offers a step by step and holistic service.
1: Review current provision and produce a gap analysis
2: Work together to develop a personalised action plan and checklist for your OFSTED/Gatsby Benchmark folder
3: Deliver services to fill any gaps (see list below)
4: Review progress on a termly basis to track against becoming OFSTED outstanding
Additional services I can offer:
- 1:1 career guidance (Level 6 qualified career guidance practitioner)
- Group career guidance (Level 6 qualified career guidance practitioner)
- Employability drop-in or appointment based service (CV writing, interview skills, mock interviews)
- Assemblies
- Engaging with employers (visitor talks, work experience, work shadowing)
- Career Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEAIG) policy writing
- Early intervention for students at risk of becoming NEET
- Training curriculum leaders and teachers – linking their subject to careers