Agenda item

During the interview, Mr Blincow used a laptop and projector to demonstrate various website pages.

 

Please introduce yourself and describe your role and responsibilities

I am the 14 – 19 Learner Support Manager.  I think a key part of what we need to do to prepare young people for work is to explain to them the complexities of work.  The philosopher Alain de Botton wrote a book called ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’, which inspires me greatly.  We should take more time and put more effort into helping young people to understand what is involved in a job.

 

My team has responsibility for KentChoices4U.com, work-related learning, enterprise education and progression into Higher and Further Education.  All this is part of the message of what is involved in the adult world beyond school.

 

What we deliver is the 14 – 19 IArea Prospectus, and Common Application Process, which is web-based and has an IAG portal.  This includes signposts to impartial information available locally, and an online application process.  We have the largest online application process in the UK, and by the end of 2011 this standard was meant to be available across the whole UK, but this target has now been removed by the Government.

 

Kent was an early adopter of the September Guarantee, under which all 16 – 19 year olds have to have a guarantee of a place in a school or college for the start of the September term.  We manage this process online. This gives us early warning of any young person who has not got a place and avoids the danger of them becoming NEET.  We have engaged local providers, area by area (although we are trying to improve the take-up in some areas), and 95% of year 11 pupils are registered online.

 

Can you identify any young person who has not applied for places?

Yes we can.

 

We have 245 providers and 10,000 different courses to offer.  This year we have a new IAG portal at the front of the prospectus to help young people, parents and teachers.  We will see how this runs this year and re-design it, if necessary, next year. 

 

Screen showing example of front page as seen by online user.

 

A user can search by geographical area and find providers in that area. Other buttons offer links to Employers pages, Parent and Carers pages, Higher Education, Careers, etc.  We collate and present existing information; we do not produce any of it ourselves. University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is responsible for 85% of local authority Area Prospectus software across the UK, and seeks to improve the quality of information for 18 year olds.  Many young people will receive and keep more than one offer of a course place so they have a ‘spare’ to fall back on in case they don’t get their first choice, and this means that many spaces (ie all the spares) are not taken up at the start of the academic year and are therefore wasted.

 

What affect has the, or will the, increase in university fees have on the choices young people make? 

I expect that this will reduce the applications for Higher Education in the short term.  These have already started to drop as many people thought that the increase was coming in this year.  We need to address what these young people might do instead of going to university, so we will add a link to ‘Not Going to Uni’ on the website.

 

Many young people think of their future in terms of what they want to be or what they want to do as a job, so we need to take that as a starting point and work back to what courses they need to do to get there.

Yes, we will include a link called “I could…’’ and set out examples of what is involved in, and what skills are needed for, different careers. From this they can be guided back to which course to choose.  Pathways are important.

 

There is still a supply-and-demand issue, eg 900 jobs unfilled in the rural sector.  How can we address this?

The way in which we link with employers is one of things we want to develop.

 

Screen showing application screen, of similar style to a shopping channel – pick and ‘add to basket’, ‘review later’, etc. Applications and offers can both be made via the screen.

 

The approach we tend to have on line is an educational one, as most information is from schools.  We write to all parents and carers in October to tell them about the system and how to use it.

 

Screen showing the number of users.

 

Users are mostly year 11 and year 12 pupils.  Many keep their accounts open from one year to the next, and we are seeking to develop this facility.  Some users are ‘out of county’, eg Cranbrook School receives a percentage of its applications from abroad.

 

We can identify any young person who has not activated their account.  We know that 20% of young people have difficulty accessing IT, eg if they have no computer at home, or their school has limited access to IT equipment.

 

Can you tell if they use the site? It’s an excellent site but, to benefit from it, young people have to engage with and use it.

We have seen the usage increase, both in terms of the number of pages visited and the length of time spent on site.

 

Young people seek something interactive, so there is a need for a complete service.

Information and advice can be delivered by technology, but guidance still needs to be delivered in a face-to-face chat.

 

Is the service you provide duplicated anywhere else in Kent? 

No, we are the only team offering this, although there might be some level of overlap with apprenticeships.

 

We could seek to develop the site and broaden the offer, but we need to consider how best to do this, perhaps by adding software that we can sell to schools. We could offer a ‘mainstream’ option and an ‘other’ option, so people can see the whole range in one place.  It would be very useful to be able to include apprenticeships, and profiles of some employers.  Some employers prefer 18 year olds rather than graduates. They take them on then and train them in their own way, using a combination of in-house and Higher Education courses.  There are large employers, eg Boots, who want to attract trainees, so it would be useful to be able to signpost people from our site to jobsites.

 

What changes are going on at the moment, for instance funding changes?

In terms of changes, there is the National Careers Service and the Education and Skills Act.  The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has a website and a helpline to signpost people.  By 2012 I would expect our responsibility for a universal careers service to end and for this to be with schools instead.  Our responsibilities are to track all learners and to give information advice and guidance (IAG) to all year 11 pupils and particularly to those identified as ‘vulnerable learners’.  Maybe schools haven’t given enough thought to how they will do this.  We will have to trust schools to make their own decisions, and they will have funding for this from the Dedicated Schools Grant, but there is the potential that the quality of service provided will drop and that coverage will become patchy.  We could suggest a kite mark scheme to set standards. Schools will need guidance and support to do this.  BIS has very few pages of guidance so will need more, and guidance will need to be clearer.  Some information contradicts other information in the same site, and some is open to different interpretations.

 

How could you check how well schools were delivering careers advice?  Would careers advice be delivered by teachers who are taking that on in addition to their teaching commitments?

A kite mark scheme, if this is brought in, would help check quality of provision.   When resources are tight and cutbacks are being made, careers advice might be one of the first areas to be squeezed.

 

I think KCC will have a major role in this.  This Committee’s recommendations will need to be carefully thought out to make a real difference in this area.

 

As schools are clustering and gaining more independence, KCC will lose its influence over them, so we’ll need to be quick to get in and make our case.  If we could enforce a kite mark scheme, parents would be able to choose a school which has the kite mark accreditation and will give good careers advice.

We have the Connexions contract until 2013, and there is a 20-point IAG health check, but it is quantitative rather than qualitative.  There is 18 months to set up a new scheme ready for the start of the National Careers Service.

 

Time will be tight for the Select Committee to influence future provision, once it finishes its work and publishes its report.

October/November is the key time to brief schools for next year.

 

As schools convert to academies and become autonomous, the KCC will lose its control over them, and the quality and consistency of careers advice might be reduced.  Is there a body we can use to check and/or control what careers service is delivered?

Freedom is good but you still need security.  Careers advice in schools is sometimes provided by any teacher who has some spare time, and these teachers have all sorts of backgrounds.  A framework to standardise careers advice could be provided by the Careers Education Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) Network.

 

KentChoices4U.com was intended as a vehicle, and each school would have a designated person who would be responsible for getting young people on board with it.

Yes, we tend to have one named contact in each school – eg the Head of Sixth Form.

 

Wolf did not say much about IAG, so we are asking what will be done about it. 

The government will hold two summits – one with young people and one with career organisations – to address this. Work-related learning and careers education for young people under 16 will no longer be a statutory provision from September 2012. Roles will change, and it will no longer be a duty, but will be an ‘expectation’.

 

The Committee has been told about the importance of parents as shapers of their children’s views.  Is your site parent-friendly?

There is a ‘parent’ button, which takes them to information for them.  There is a link for parents to give feedback, and their comments help shape the site.

 

Could we establish a ‘Kent Kite Mark’?  Would that demonstrate KCC’s power and responsibility in this field?

We could do.  It could perhaps be called ‘Kent Expects…’

 

There is a chasm opening up between KCC and the schools which are becoming academies. I think we should deal very carefully with the changes and the new relationships.

Some people in my team have the specific job of building and managing relationships between KCC and its partners.  We could assess what services we can offer to academies, and we would charge them for the services we provide, so this will make a different type of relationship. Academies are still on the CEIAG networks.

 

Do you have links to the Kent Youth Service?

Yes, and also to Gateways and Libraries.