Post-16: Career Guidance

Finding employment or moving into higher education can involve unique challenges for a young person transitioning from school to further learning and the workplace. The Special Education Needs and Disabilities Gatsby Toolkit provides guidance to education providers on what good careers provision looks like. It details eight benchmarks, explaining what each is and what it looks like in practice.

Schools and colleges should use The SEND Gatsby Benchmark Toolkit [Size: 3.9 MB, File: PDF] to support and develop a career programme and career strategy that meets the needs of all their students. There is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach (Please look at the career strategy section below).

Career information, advice and guidance will be quite different to individual students and will need to be tailored to the young person’s career outcome. Young people with SEND can access mainstream careers and employer engagement in the usual manner but may need more career sessions and adjustments to support raising aspirations to career outcomes:

• May need further career sessions to discuss options.
• Time and mentoring to build trust.
• More time and engagement with employer opportunities
• Preparation for employer engagement or work placements.
• Aspiration raising to build encouragement as early as possible.
• Environmental adaptations.
• Support for families or carers with signposting.

As part of the career strategy, governing bodies have a key role in ensuring schools not only meet their legal requirements, but to also equip their students with the tools and knowledge to make informed choices about their futures. The Governor slide deck is a useful resource for governors.

Every school and college will be expected to publish details of their careers programme for young people and their parents (Legal Duty).

Career Guidance is understood to be the full range of activity delivered under the eight Gatsby Benchmarks.

The governing body must make sure that independent careers guidance is provided to all pupils throughout their secondary education (11- to 18-year-olds) and students aged up to 25 with an education, health, and care plan, and that it is: presented in an impartial manner, showing no bias or favouritism towards a particular institution, education, or work option.

The updated provider access legislation has now been enacted. It specifies schools must provide at least six encounters with approved providers of apprenticeships and technical education for all their students:

• Two encounters for pupils during the ‘first key phase’ (year 8 or 9) that are mandatory for all pupils to attend.
• Two encounters for pupils during the ‘second key phase’ (year 10 or 11) that are mandatory for all pupils to attend.
• Two encounters for pupils during the ‘third key phase’ (year 12 or 13) that are mandatory for the school to put on but optional for pupils to attend.

This new legislation will become a key mechanism to further help learners understand and take-up, not just apprenticeships, but wider technical education options such as T-Levels and Higher Technical Qualifications. Here is a link to the Careers and Enterprise Company dedicated page about Provider Access Legislation.

Every school and college must appoint a named person to the role of Careers Leader to lead the careers programme (Contractual Duty). Here is the electronic version of the SEND Outreach Campaign. It contains lots of useful resources for Career Leaders in a SEND setting.

The Careers and Enterprise Company provide a range of resources that schools can use to support the development of their career’s programmes. These can be accessed on their Resources page.

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Careers Hub has been established as part of the national network of Career Hubs. Through Enterprise Coordinators the Hub supports schools and colleges, who are members of the Hub, to improve and develop their careers programmes and access networks of employers and providers than can engage with an support schools and colleges.