Career advice 'must be impartial'

The legislation will ban schools from giving biased careers advice

Schools will be legally required to deliver impartial careers advice to teenagers, under proposed legislation being debated in the House of Commons.

This will ban schools and colleges in England from "unduly promoting" their own courses or types of qualification.

There have been claims of biased advice, such as schools discouraging their pupils from switching to rival local further education colleges.

The Education and Skills Bill sets out plans to raise the school leaving age.

Alongside this extension, careers advice is being reviewed - to improve the signposting for courses and training available for 16-year-olds who will now have to remain in education until the age of 18.

Poaching

The legislation says that schools and colleges "must not unduly promote any particular options over any others".

In the longer term, this could mean stopping schools from promoting A-levels over the forthcoming Diplomas. But in the short term it is a response to fears that institutions are giving advice in a way that boosts their own numbers.

There have been concerns that schools and colleges, competing for post-16 pupils, have used careers advice as a recruiting tool, rather than focusing on the interests of the pupil.

The explanatory document accompanying the legislation says that the changes for careers advice "will tackle a longstanding and widely reported criticism that advice to young people is sometimes influenced by institutional interests".

As such, attempts to poach or to retain 16-year-old pupils by issuing "biased" information about course options will become illegal.

The proposed law would require all secondary schools "not to promote the interests of the school or other persons or institutions contrary to the pupil's interests".

It says: "Information and reference materials provided must present a full range of learning and career options and not unduly promote one option over another."

Head teachers' leader John Dunford says schools and colleges would not want to see pupils given the wrong advice - and that it is not in the interest of either the pupil or institution for anyone to be taking the wrong type of course.

But Dr Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, rejected claims that this was about trying to protect the fledgling Diplomas from being overlooked by schools preferring the traditional A-levels.

Maggie Scott of the the Association of Colleges welcomed the announcement as an opportunity to improve the quality of advice for young people.

"Many people in Britain think that the careers advice they received at school just wasn’t up to the job," she said.