Primary school children to get careers advice

New careers information, advice and guidance (IAG) has been launched by the Children, Schools and Families Secretary, Ed Balls, Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United Football Club and Schools Minister Iain Wright.

The new IAG strategy has been launched to help modernise careers education for children up to the age of 18. This strategy will include piloting careers advice in primary aged children, too.

The strategy sets out plans for:

• the Government’s ambition that every young person will get careers education up to the age of 18, in line with raising the participation age;
• piloting approaches to teaching about careers in primary school and for them to work with universities to give younger children an experience of higher education and the wider world of work;
• the ambition that every young person will have access to a mentor – two new national mentoring champions will help increase mentoring opportunities between schools, businesses and higher education;
• better online access to careers advice through Facebook, You Tube, blogs and forums. Plus, a new dedicated online mentoring scheme from 2010 to enable young people to contact professionals online;
• more help for disadvantaged and disabled young people in accessing work experience so that all young people -regardless of their background, ethnicity or gender – can realise their full potential;
• provide support and resource for schools and parents to engage with young people from an early age to talk about career opportunities;
• a £10m fund to support innovative ways of delivering careers education.

The department is piloting career related learning in 38 primary schools this year and will aim to encourage children and parents to have conversations about careers and education choices early, during the final years of primary school. It is hoped this will help prepare young people to choose the right subject options at 14. Parents will be given help, support and resources to do this.

The new IAG strategy is informed and influenced by Alan Milburn’s report ‘Fair Access to the Professions’ published this summer. It also builds on the work of the Cabinet Office New Opportunities White Paper.

You can download the strategy from the DCSF’s publications department.