FUTURE TALENTED Autumn Term 2018 - Issue 1 | Page 20

Gatsby Benchmarks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Careers education is about supporting young people to make informed decisions. Claudia Harris outlines practical steps to strengthening your careers education programme and helping students to follow their dreams and rise as far as their talents allow. CLAUDIA HARRIS CHIEF EXECUTIVE, THE CAREERS & ENTERPRISE COMPANY n effective careers education is associated with lower unemployment and higher salaries in later life. It’s vital for students, schools and employers that we get this right, which is why the Careers & Enterprise Company was set up by the government in 2015: to support schools and colleges to improve their careers education. Our focus at the time was on increasing the volume and quality of interactions between young people and employers. There have always been exceptional schools, careers professionals and not-for-profits working in careers education. But as a 2013 Ofsted report found, too often provision was poorly co-ordinated and narrow and too few students were experiencing direct engagement with the world of work. Fortunately, in the past few years, careers education has come a long way. Thanks to the Gatsby Foundation, we now have an accepted set of standards for what a world-class careers education looks like. A Bringing your careers education programme to life 20 // EMPLOYABILITY Your roadmap to success In December 2017, the government’s careers strategy gave us a roadmap to get there. Our growing Enterprise Adviser Network is a vehicle to achieve this. The careers strategy had three key ideas at its heart. First, it recognised the