#TheWeekInCareers - Episode 10

Welcome to The Week in?#Careers! If you are a first-time reader (and congratulations if so, you are now part of a 1200+ strong community!), this newsletter is my attempt at summarising some of the key?#Careers-related news from across the?#Careersphere?each week, along with some of the talking points I feel are worthy of further debate amongst the?#Careers?community! So, without further ado, on to the news!

A Week is a Long Time in Politics...

I'll be the first to admit that I've been a mite fatalistic over the past few weeks about the state of our politics in the UK (specifically in Westminster) and that recent articles about the impending schools funding crisis next year have left me more than a little concerned for how this will impact the #Careers community working in this space but I'm endeavouring to embrace the positives where I can and as far as weeks go, this has been better than many of late for the #Careers profession, in terms of CEIAG featuring relatively prominently in political conversations! There are two big-ticket items to mention, the latest Education Select Committee hearing into CEIAG and Lord Blunkett's independent report into learning and skills, as well as news of the latest cohort of MPs that will be overseeing the education/skills brief on behalf of Rishi Sunak's new government and a right royal endorsement for vocational education, so let's get stuck into it!

Education Select Committee CEIAG hearing #2...

The latest evidence hearing as part of the Education Select Committee's inquiry into Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) took place earlier this week, with input from?Chris Jeffries?of?DevClever Ltd,?Paul Warner?of?Association of Employment and Learning Providers - AELP,?Katharine Horler?of?Careers England?and?Philip Le Feuvre?of?NCFE?- there have been some decent summaries/commentary of the action shared by members of the careers community, including?Tristram Hooley?and?Dr. Deirdre Hughes OBE, which I've linked to below, along with some of the highlights from the hearing, chaired by Robert Halfon MP:

?? General consensus from both the panel and MPs that the current picture for CEIAG in England is too fragmented and certainly not providing a one-stop-shop for young people to receive high-quality careers advice and guidance from primary to adult education.?Skills Development Scotland?receives a shout-out for demoing what a joined-up all-age careers system could look like, particularly in terms of having a strong digital offer and consistency in training of careers professionals.

?? Important points from?Katharine Horler?about the National Careers Service (NCS) and why their role in supporting young people with CIAG is still not fully understood by stakeholders in government (e.g. yes, they offer information and advice to young people via phone and web, but very few take this up and it is certainly not guidance, as they cannot deliver this given statutory duty is on schools).

???Chris Jeffries?made a salient point around how young people (and I'd add, parents/carers) may consume CEIAG and the need to be mindful of this e.g. considering what part a digital offer can play and whether, like a programme of careers education, this could be standardised for all schools.

?? Lots of discussion around the evidence base for how high-quality CEIAG impacts young people and the economy (and plenty of queries from MPs about the impact/ROI of the CEC), which understandably led back to the question of funding and how it might be best directed into CEIAG activity (e.g. a careers 'premium' for schools? More money to the CEC/NCS? Establishing a central body to bring all of this together and act as a broker?) Would have been useful to have individuals like?Dr. Deirdre Hughes OBE?and?Chris Percy?on hand to talk in more detail about the ROI research for CEIAG, though!

As mentioned above, there has been some useful commentary in the #Careersphere following the hearing earlier in the week, including Tristram Hooley 's Tweet thread and links to the evidence base for CEIAG from Associate Professor Deirdre Hughes OBE , Anthony Mann , Carolyn Parry and others, which I've linked below! ??

Tristram Hooley 's Twitter Highlights:

Evidence from the OECD regarding the value/ROI of CEIAG (with thanks to Anthony Mann , Associate Professor Deirdre Hughes OBE and Carolyn Parry for highlighting!):

You can watch the full recording of the CEIAG hearing via the Parliament TV link below!

Lord Blunkett lays out a way forward for Learning and Skills...

This week also saw the publication of an independent report, commissioned by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in 2021, entitled Learning and skills for economic recovery, social cohesion and a more equal Britain, the purpose of which was to research the current skills and lifelong learning landscape and offer policy recommendations for Labour to consider ahead of the production of their next General Election manifesto. The report, compiled by Labour peer Lord Blunkett in partnership with the grandly named Council of Skills Advisers, offers a range of recommendations for enhancing our education, skills and lifelong learning infrastructure in the UK, including a number of references to CEIAG, which many careers professionals will no doubt welcome with open arms! The key recommendations in the report referring to #Careers can be seen below:

A complete shakeup of the career service, from school through to adult careers guidance, which should ensure that:

• A trained Careers Leader is embedded in every school, with responsibility for the career guidance programme and supported by, and accountable to, the school leadership team.
• A requirement is introduced for all educational institutions to become part of a regional or sub-regional Careers Hub.
• Via Career Hubs, each student is provided with access to a mentor or role model support, engaging further and higher education, and local employers.
• A high-quality national all-age career and Information and Guidance (IAG) service is implemented, available in partnership with Job Centre Plus, that provides all young people and adults with opportunities for face-to-face contact with qualified guidance professionals as well as access to online resources.?

As always, Janet Colledge is also on the case and has crunched the numbers on some of the key messages in the report for careers professionals to be aware of via LinkedIn, which certainly makes for heartening reading!

While there have been concerns raised by some members of the teaching community regarding a few of the education curriculum/assessment proposals in the report, it is important to note that the recommendations involved are not yet Labour policy and indeed, there is no obligation for them to be adopted (partly or in full) moving forward, so it is very much 'watch this space' as things stand...

You can read the full report, executive summary and key recommendations by clicking on the image below! ??

Another week, another Education Secretary...

To add to the excitement this week, we saw the formation of the new ministerial team for Education assembled as part of Rishi Sunak's government, with Gillian Keegan MP leading the charge as the newly appointed Education Secretary - careers professionals may remember Gillian Keegan from her time as Skills Minister, during which time she helped oversee the launch of the FE white paper and skills bill, the initial rollout of T Levels, and the skills bootcamps. For those wanting to find out more about her background and the education sector's reaction to her appointment, both FE News and Wonkhe have produced profiles of Gillian Keegan, available via the hyperlinks above!

Joining the new Education Secretary are familiar faces in Nick Gibb MP and Robert Halfon MP, who appear to be heading back to their old roles as Schools Minister and Skills Minister respectively, with Kelly Tolhurst MP remaining as Children's Minister for now, and Jonathan Gullis MP and Andrea Jenkyns MP likely to stand down from their current positions. Careers professionals will likely be heartened by Robert Halfon's return to the Education team, given his longstanding support for CEIAG, although his appointment does mean a new chair will need to be found for the CEIAG Education Select Committee hearing, so hopefully momentum does not stall in his absence. Some in the #Careers community have also expressed concerns previously regarding Halfon's focus on skills/apprenticeships as something of a panacea/his slightly sceptical scrutiny of the value of more holistic careers education/guidance, so it will be interesting to see how this new Education team takes forward the many priorities facing the education/CEIAG landscape, particularly in light of the increasingly desperate funding picture for schools.

You can keep track of all of the comings and goings in the Department for Education by clicking on the image below!

A Royal Endorsement...

And finally, although not strictly political (Ed: Careful, now...) many careers professionals this week were heartened to see a royal endorsement of the importance of technical and vocational education as part of a recent episode of The Repair Shop - in the show, King Charles III (then Prince Charles) praises the value of technical skills and apprenticeships, while bemoaning the relative lack of vocational education in schools as 'a great tragedy'. Many of us in the #Careers community will be hoping this final act from Charles before becoming monarch has an immediate impact on those in power, in terms of precipitating a greater investment in technical and vocational education moving forward!

You can watch The Repair Shop episode here and check out the story referenced above via the link below!

The International Perspective

Leading on from last week's segment which looked at the innovative BECOME Education / Action4Agriculture careers education / LMI initiative, #TheWeekInCareers felt it was an opportune time to take things global once again and highlight some of the brilliant careers work currently taking place in the international community that has been garnering significant airtime in the #Careersphere this week:

Culture-Infused Career Counselling: A Model for Counsellors and Clients - This fantastic article from Canada-based Dr. Nancy Arthur and Dr. Sandra Collins has been getting a lot of coverage on #Careersphere Twitter in the last few days (thanks to both Matthias Feist and Tristram Hooley for bringing it to my attention!) and came at a very serendipitous time for me, having met up with my former trainee careers practitioner mentee, Naveed Backer , earlier this week and discussed just this topic in relation to his experience as an Indian student training to be a careers professional in the UK. The Culture-Infused Career Counselling (CICC) model emphasises reflective practice and encourages careers professionals to consider the following potential influences in relation to their practice:

1. Self-awareness about personal cultural identity,
2. Awareness about the cultures of our clients, and,
3. Awareness of how culture influences the working alliance between practitioners and clients.

An extremely useful model for reflecting on how culture influences our work as careers professionals, particularly in an era when many of us may be working with a more diverse global pool of clients than ever, whether that be international students, refugees, asylum seekers or clients accessing our support remotely from all over the world:

Career Clusters - It's a return to Oz next up, as we take a peek at some fantastic new material from Study Work Grow , an Australian careers resource company who have been getting a lot of love on social media from the #Careers community of late for their Career Clusters resources, which are designed to help individuals (particularly young people) think differently about how people work. The six clusters can be found below, along with a series of animated videos that socialise the concept for any interested parties - it looks like a really engaging tool for sparking broader careers conversations with people of all ages!

Staying Down Under, It's also worth keeping an eye on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development, which is threaded into the BECOME Education programmes referenced in last week's newsletter and is also informed by a #Careers community fan favourite, the Chaos Theory of Careers! (followers of Jim Bright , like myself, will be particularly delighted to see this!):

The Challenge Mindset: Helping Youth Find Purpose and Impact?- It's a return to Canada for our final item in this segment, as JP Michel 's excellent TEDx talk on 'The Challenge Mindset' connects nicely with the Career Clusters concept mentioned above - in the video, JP Michel talks about how we can reframe traditional approaches to careers education by moving away from discussions around what type of job young people might want to do and towards what type of challenges they may wish to solve, whether this is improving the quality of healthcare, designing cleaner transportation or making agriculture more sustainable. What's so nice about the model that JP Michel proposes is that he acknowledges this conversation is not always easy (e.g. 'What problems do you want to solve'? is heavy stuff for many experienced professionals, let alone students!) but that by focusing careers education in this way from an early age, it encourages young people to think about the world more holistically and how they might want to be a part of it:

I'd also be remiss to conclude this segment of the newsletter without mentioning our upcoming episode of #WeAreCareers (live at 12:00 on Wednesday 2nd November), where MeetSabiha . and I will be chatting with UAE-based Careers Educator and Thought Leader Maria Vitoratos about how careers professionals around the world can adapt their practice to meet the relevant needs of their clients! Links to the episode below! ??

Career Development Institute Facebook Community: View the event HERE

Career Development Institute LinkedIn Page: View the LinkedIn event HERE

Career Development Institute YouTube Channel:

National Mentoring Day

A slightly shorter final item this week but (in my opinion, at least) a really important one - 27th October each year marks National Mentoring Day, an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the benefits of mentoring and the impact it can have on both mentees and mentors. The creation of business mentor Chelsey Baker , National Mentoring Day has a pretty clear mission:

"Our goal is to make mentoring accessible to any individual, child, business or group that needs it, regardless of age, background or ethnicities. National Mentoring Day aims to educate, inspire, connect and support mentoring to effect positive change and elevate mentoring throughout the world."

The National Mentoring Day website also has lots of useful resources and ideas for individuals and organisations wanting to get involved in the initiative now or in the future, including suggestions for how to celebrate mentors you may be working with, strategies for launching a new mentoring scheme and ways to promote existing activity, including via social media with the hashtag #NationalMentoringDay.

Now, you may be thinking it was an interesting choice to promote National Mentoring Day after it has already taken place for this calendar year but please bear with, there is method to my madness! As someone who is working on a mentoring initiative in my current role, seeing some of the posts from National Mentoring Day reminded me of some of the fantastic articles and resources I've come across recently related to mentoring, so I felt it would be an opportune time to give these a plug as part of this week's newsletter ??

How to be a Great Mentor - Jake Richings ' newsletter, Authentic Engagement, is generally a cracking read but his latest edition was particularly topical, as it highlights three top tips for being a great mentor, looking at how you can make a mentoring relationship more about the mentee than yourself, helping mentees to create their own solutions and reflecting critically on your potential blind spots as a mentor. You can read the full article via the link below!

Building Your Personal Board - Call this something of a re-gift, as eagle-eyed newsletter readers will notice that I've plugged this in #TheWeekInCareers previously but it just fits so well for the #NationalMentoringDay theme! This episode of the always excellent Squiggly Careers Podcast (from Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis ), entitled How to build a personal board for your career, approaches the idea of mentoring from a slightly different angle, exploring how you can assemble a collection of career advocates to support you with different aspects of your development, from Supporters to Challengers, Ideators to Questioners - it's a really useful way of considering how we reframe mentoring relationships!

Peer Mentoring and Nudge Theory - We end on another alternative take on traditional mentoring relationships, this time from the world of higher education, with the 2020 HECSU-funded report evaluating the impact of Careers and Employability, University of Liverpool 's innovative peer-to-peer Career Studio approach, which involves trained student career coaches providing front-line careers support to students at the university and continues to this day - there are some fascinating insights in the report regarding the benefits (potential and realised) of this approach to career coaching/mentoring at an HE level and indeed, the model has since been co-opted or adapted by other HEIs, so is well worth being aware of!

Did you do anything to celebrate #NationalMentoringDay this year or have a mentor/mentee you'd love to give a shout-out to? If so, why not submit your nomination for a #CareersCheers on next week's #WeAreCareers (Ed: Shameless plug, be better!) to myself or MeetSabiha . prior to next Wednesday and brighten someone's week! ??

The Best of the Rest: My Hot Picks from the wider?#Careersphere

Going 'Net Positive' and Industry 5.0 - There have been some interesting pieces floating around the #Careersphere this week concerning the future of work, and in a refreshing change of pace, these are not all focused on what employees/individuals may need to do in order to adapt to a changing world but rather are concentrated on employers and industry themselves. Two good examples are this article from Paul Polman and Andrew Winston on how companies can build a better society (e.g. 'Net Positive') and this Forbes piece from Jeroen Kraaijenbrink on 'Industry 5.0' aka moving the purpose of companies/businesses beyond productivity and towards shared prosperity and contribution to society. An interesting buzzphrase for careers professionals to keep an eye on!

CDI Career Matters (October 2022): Out Now! - This week, Career Development Institute members were treated to the latest edition of the quarterly Career Matters publication gracing our doorsteps, edited for the first time by the excellent Dr Oliver Jenkin PGCE RCDP MNCPS (Acc.) FNICEC ! I'll be doing a full review in next week's newsletter but in the meantime, if you're interested in accessing a smorgasbord of brilliant articles (covering everything from pathways in TEFL to utilising the UNSDGs in careers work) written by a litany of #Careers champions from across the #Careersphere, why not check out the membership options for the CDI and consider joining our growing community!

Complete Careers FREE Primary Conference (15th November 2022) - Coming hot off the heels of the recent successful Complete Careers Conference looking at quality assurance, COMPLETE-CAREERS LLP have another FREE conference coming up for careers professionals on Tuesday 15th November 2022, this time looking at what careers education in primary schools is really all about and how you can leverage the existing resources and support available to understand the relevance of career learning from early years onward. You can sign up for the conference via the link above!

Being a Librarian: Expectations vs Reality - As careers professional, we are always curious to uncover useful nuggets of information about occupations and industries we might be less familiar with and this article from last year, entitled Being a Librarian: Expectations vs Reality, is a great read for challenging any misconceptions we might have about what this work entails. Although the article is written from a US perspective, there are some hugely useful insights regarding the different types of librarian roles, how these differ from support roles in libraries and the skills/professional development it takes to do this work as a long-term career!

Non-Linear Careers: Art Imitating Life - Finally this week, we end with a delightful video which has been doing the rounds in the #Careersphere this week, entitled Success Isn't Linear (by Yoann Bourgeois) - I won't spoil the video for those who haven't yet come across it but I highly encourage all careers professionals and other readers of the newsletter to click on the link above and brighten up your Friday!

I'm always keen to hear what people think of this weekly newsletter format (e.g. Is it helpful? Does it add value to what is already out there on LinkedIn? What might make it better/more digestible?) so please do drop me a DM if you have any thoughts!

See you all in the?#Careersphere?next week for?Episode 11!