The
green paper Youth Matters
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20th August 2005
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and
why Bill thinks the green paper could transform
the roles of careers coordinators
The green paper Youth Matters is another in a recent line
of government publications showing an understanding of how careers
really work. It is, of course, carefully worded with all
the predictable nods in the direction of influential stakeholders.
But, it does not much use the term career; and there
may be more than one lesson in that for us. For, despite the omission,
the green papers proposals show a far-from-superficial understanding
of what actually happens in peoples lives.
In
fact Youth Matters draws on more evidence from outside the
careers-work field than from inside. It is interested in social
change. It points to the need for redistributing resources. It sets
out a strategy for locally networking more resources. And, whatever
word we use, it all assembles into a realistic approach to helping
people in their management of working life.
Careers
work will not get everything it wants from this. But, Bill argues,
the important thing is to recognise the strategic opportunity. And
Youth Matters radically re-positions our work - offering
a real opportunity to make a difference to peoples chances
in life.
The
green paper locates careers work near the heart of a wide-ranging
reform of how communities and curriculum respond to change. It envisages
this integrative reform as driven by local action. All of this will
place programme managers, such as careers coordinators, in key roles.
It
will also confront them with three urgent issues:
1.
how universal and how targeted should your work be?
2. how impartial can it be, and does learning-to-learn help?
3. what do you need to consolidate, before you begin to integrate?
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straight to local-management issues
get an annotated and referenced extended version of this
article, in pdf format
The
two characteristics which separate this policy document from most
of the rest are the scope of its appreciation of change in our society,
and the way in which its proposals have coherence.
Well
come to coherence later; but what about change?
what change?
The
green paper deserves to be read with care: between the lines there
are indications of what the authors plainly know, but dont
quite dare to say. For example they speak of change in the global
economy and the technologies which make it possible. But, below
the surface, there is also an appreciation of the impact that all
of this has on peoples lives and in their neighbourhoods.
It is not just economy, nor even technology,
it is also society:
Changes
in the economy, society and technology mean that young people
today have more opportunities than previous generations and most
take full advantage of them.
para.
2
1.
social change.
A bit overly upbeat, you might think. It could have pointed out
that some social change is bad news for people and their neighbourhoods.
And it might have owned up to the fact that some of that bad news
is directly the result of changes in economy and its technologies
- which constrict as well as expand opportunities.
But
policy darent talk like that. And - credit where its
due Youth Matters goes a long way in proposing a socially-rooted
framework-for-help. Our work is set in an expanding network of local
resources:
...it is important that we integrate Connexions with a wider
range of services at local level.
para.
39
Youth
Matters may very well have gone as far as any policy document
can go in framing what we can do about careers.
Now its up to us. And the green paper says so. But what are
we to say? There has been a mixed reaction from our people. If we
are to continue to resist, we need to be sure that our opposition
is not just a failure to understand the extent and dynamics of change.
Social, economic and technological change now bring bigger demands
than the limited apparatus of careers-education-and-guidance can
cope with.
At
the fringes that change is depressed neighbourhoods, kids kicking
over traces, neglected families, marginalised cultures, decaying
amenities - alienated hopelessness. In many more places it is bored
kids, stressed students, disappointed workers, a longing for work-life
balance - hope against hope.
2.
cultural change.
Social change has cultural consequences. Youth Matters touches
on some:
The
Internet and mobile phones have revolutionised the way young people
live and the way in which they communicate and get information.
Technologies such as MP3 are transforming the way they access
music.
para.
2
This
is also cautiously worded. Theres more to it than that: iPod,
game-box, soap. BigB and video-phone shape, embed and express beliefs
and values. They speak of who we are, and who can be allowed to
have a say in our lives. That varies neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood
and crew-to-crew; but hang-loose informality, street-level distrust,
and demand for respect are prevalent. It is a world in which notions
of exclusively-authoritative professionalism serve nobody well.
Such social and cultural changes are well documented. And they have
implications for how career management is best enabled. But policy
avoids going far down this track. Too exposed.
Helpers
and, in particular, programme managers - cant afford
to avoid anything. Actually, if they are in touch with their learners
thoughts and feelings, avoidance is not a possibility. Thats
their authority. And, this article argues, the proposals in Youth
Matters are going to need that authority to be fully engaged.
what matters?
There
are issues that the green paper does not resolve. But, in getting
to grips with them, we need to separate what is strategic from what
is tactical. The most strategic issue is for how careers work is
to be positioned in its field.
1.
location! location! location!
Positioning raises questions about what kind of service, who best
can manage it, in what kind of organisation and with what range
of resources.
The issue of position is addressed first in the green paper by how
careers work is to be located in relation to its users. Is it possible
for effective careers work to be, before everything else, a universal
rather than a targeted service? Youth Matters does not start
with any assumption that it can. It is true there is much talk of
the need to respond to all young peoples voice and choice.
But the green paper doesnt argue so much from general entitlements
as from specific needs. Although it doesnt say so, it is redistributive
(another of those avoided words). It argues for targeting more resources
where more are needed:
The
teenage years are also a time of transition and many young people
face difficult challenges relating, for example, to study,
money, employment, health, self-esteem and relationships. Some
young people, including disabled young people and those who are
homeless, may face barriers in accessing education and leisure,
and teenagers from some ethnic groups have to face prejudice.
para.
5
They
all do. Some might also need to be helped to face the fact that
not all of their early learning and experience, and the social and
cultural attachments they form, are serving them well. They are
going to need a lot of help. From all kinds of people:
...[it]
will inevitably mean changes for many of the workforce currently
located in Connexions, Youth Services or in targeted support programmes,
whether they are employed by Connexions Partnerships, Local Authorities,
the voluntary and community sector or private providers.
para.
273
And
so considering position also means thinking about how careers work
is to be located in relation to its working partners both
actual and potential. The terms multi-disciplinary,
integrate, and voluntary get a lot of mentions
in Youth Matters. We are in for some serious re-thinking
- about how better to work with other-than-careers helpers and with
people helping from other-than-professional bases. Among the reasons:
...there
will also be times when young people want to seek confidential
information and advice... from a trusted adult who is not linked
to where they live or where they are studying.
para. 30
The
green paper calls it remodelling the workforce (para.
275). Re-positioning helpers might prove more useful.
This includes some uses that have not yet been anticipated. For
example, a current concern is about how we are ever going to establish
a life-long service. Youth Matters is not about that; but
the way it re-positions careers work will prove useful. There is
more hope for the emergence of trusted, credible and accessible
help in local networks, than we have ever been able to establish
from more-formal bases. An important step along this path is in
the way in which the networks will retain contact with people, after
they have left school or college.
A concern for the needs of the most vulnerable demands greater access
to both community and curriculum. And the re-positioning proposed
in the green paper links careers work to both sorts of help. But
it does so for all people; and in relation to their roles as learners,
workers, citizens, partners and parents. It all offers the kind
of connectedness which can become a starting point for helping -
life-long.
2. integrated resources
for integrated lives. Such a re-positioning calls for
a different sort of organisational relationships. This is integration:
Our
vision is to see services integrated around young peoples
needs helping all teenagers achieve the five Every Child Matters
outcomes to the greatest possible extent.
para.
11
The
reference to Every Child Matters is a reminder of government
intentions that alienated and vulnerable children will each find
their place in society healthy, safe,
enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution
and having economic well-being. Alongside its proposals
for careers work Youth Matters proposes funding for sport,
volunteering and places to go and things to do.
The green papers authors seem to know that work and social
membership are deeply interwoven (para. 150). It is the basis for
deepening and widening the range of help. Youth Matters says
lets do that for sport and volunteering as well as
for citizenship and working roles. It could have said lets
also do that for consumer and domestic roles. And, if it doesnt,
local managers should. They might yet come up with something more
like a life-role-relevant curriculum: that helps people to work
out what to do - not only in examination rooms but in their lives.
Integration
is the organisational structure which cuts across conventional boundaries
- making such programmes possible:
This
focus should be helped by improved integration across professional
boundaries and breaking down of barriers between programmes and
funding streams.
para.
248
Integration
links across curriculum, to Connexions and with employers. It also
links to the wider resources of other professions, families, voluntary
organisations, voluntary helpers, local health centres, youth facilities
and drop-in centres. The network of help is curriculum- and community-wide.
To
be fair, there were always such outreach elements in careers-service
work. The significance of Youth Matters is that it builds
in that kind of integration - as a design feature.
3.
Connexions in local networks.
The green papers headline news is that at least some Connexions
companies will survive.
We
will encourage Local Authorities to retain the Connexions brand
and would welcome views on the range of services it might cover.
para.
39
A
brand is only a brand; retaining it doesnt mean that Connexions
will survive unchanged. Some companies might not survive at all.
But there have been suggestions that government might do with Connexions
what governments sometimes do - bale out and start again. Instead
Youth Matters is suggesting a new, and more-usefully located,
start for Connexions.
Why so? Because it now envisages Connexions as part of an already-embedded
local network of help, centred on local authoritys childrens
trusts.
We want to see children's trusts at the heart of these developments,
orchestrating a mixed economy of services and opportunities for
young people.
para.
92
That
network will link Connexions to local youth, social, health and
education-welfare services; as well as to professional, voluntary
and privately-financed sources of help.
But it is strengthened links in schools and colleges which offer
Connexions its big chance. We have barely begun to unlock curriculum
potential for helping people to live their lives. And programme
managers with good timing will be thinking about that now.
Firstly, under extended-school provisions, schools are to develop
their relationship with local communities. There are networking
possibilities there. Secondly, we still havent really made
up our mind about the Tomlinson committees call for greater
relevance in curriculum. With the right kind of staff, Connexions
can become a serious player here. (The green paper mentions the
14-19 white paper para. 57 - but does not develop the Tomlinson
possibilities. For more on the mutual dependence of Connexions and
Tomlinson see where now?, below.) There are more possibilities
now visible than conventionally-understood careers-education-and-guidance
could ever realise.
Government
cant tell us how to make any of this work, and it doesnt
try:
...while
we expect Local Authorities to develop an integrated youth support
service we are not advocating any particular approach.
para.
256
But
it urges that all must be locally negotiated.
...we
believe that it is now time for the support and guidance services
provided by Connexions to go local so that they can
be more fully included and integrated with the whole range of
services for young people and their parents.
para.
61
There is, however, still a question about how local local
should be. Economy, community and culture can vary as much within
local-authorities as between them. Regional, county, city and district
authorities are not local enough. That is why some Connexions companies
have already started on cluster partnerships - linking schools and
colleges with local resources. We need organisations which specifically
respond to what is specific in locality.
The
last time this kind of resource was put at anything like the unfettered
disposal of local decision-making was in early-days consortium groups,
set up to support the delivery of the Technical and Vocational Education
Initiative. TVEI at its best was good at engaging learners in integrated
programme calling on community contacts. And learners were reported
to recognise the usefulness to their lives of this learning.
Like TVEI, Youth Matters needs local programme managers.
They need to be close enough to the ground to understand what is
needed, and how it can be made to work. That will be different in
different neighbourhoods. And it will re-engage the creativity and
sensibilities of the best of our local managers. Indeed,
as in local TVEI, we may need to think of neighbourhood management
teams.
ideas
for action
Youth
Matters invites us to work out how an expanded network of resources
can best be organised to serve local needs. It looks for specific
action not general aspirations. But, for the moment, the careers-education-and-guidance
field has been able to respond only in general terms. Much of what
is said is founded on national surveys and international comparisons.
We should not ignore the issues they raise. But neither should we
assume that global trends are locally usefully.
Three
issues need to be resolved in local action:
1.
do we start from a universal or a targeted service?
2. how impartial can it be and does learning-to-learn help?
3. how much consolidation do we need and how much integration?
1.
universal and targeted programmes. Where does a local
manager best find an understanding for this work? It is sometimes
argued that it is logical to start on that process by thinking of
the needs of the many, and developing that first into a universal
programme. The needs of the most vulnerable would then be thought
as calling for a separate and targeted programme.
There are never any the-same-for-everybody answers to such issues.
Reality is not that tidy. But there is a supplementary question:
local managers might well ask themselves, but wouldnt
what we learn from the most vulnerable actually help us better to
understand the majority?. Youd have to try it out to
find out.
A
lot of on-the-ground programme development has fruitfully tried
it out. Work experience, recording experience, profiling and action-planning
were not first developed for the majority; they were developed because
what we were doing before wasnt found to be working for the
most vulnerable. Indeed, careers guidance itself got started on
the basis of helping vulnerable migrant workers find their way into
mainstream society. That train of events has repeated itself in
the histories of both American and British work in this field. A
majority have been offered all these kinds of help after they had
been tried out on a needy minority. So, although some now want to
answer the supplementary question no, much of our history
has answered yes. Good thing too.
If
excluded says anything, it speaks of young men and women
whose early learning and experience does not give them access to
mainstream roles in our society. Not them, not the adults at home,
not many in their neighbourhood. This is an extreme form of social
stratification; and Britain is one of the most socially stratified
societies among OECD nations. The green paper is pretty good on
exclusion by gender, race and disability. But it is less good on
social class (is class another of those not-ok words?).
And there will be evidence of social stratification on every local
managers patch - in sequestered privilege, in run-down neighbourhoods,
often-enough in both. Social stratification means that, if things
are allowed to take their natural course, social origin
will predict career destiny. Careers work doesnt necessarily
hold with natural courses: they can arbitrarily favour some and
penalise others.
And so, much of our history records how careers workers take on
the challenge of the ghetto. And how, in doing that, they have discovered
- writ large - more about the hidden dynamics of careers in leafy
suburbs. The former needs are actually versions of the latter. In
locally-managing careers work it means understanding that the frustration,
anger and detachment which draws attention to the excluded
is a version of the boredom, stress and depression that a good many
of the included quietly endure.
Seen
in these terms much of the distinction between the targeted
and the universal falls apart. Learning to work with
the sharp pain helps us to work with the dull ache. All helping
professions advance that way. It sets the excluded among
a local managers most valuable teachers.
2.
impartiality and learning-to-learn. Advocates of universal
provision tend also to advocate a more-or-less free-standing careers
service. You might argue that such independence protects impartiality
- helpers can attend, unhindered, to learners needs.
The
matter becomes compelling where helpers work in ways which maximise
their organisations funding needs, rather than serving students
learning needs. It is not hard to find stories of such pressure.
All dependent organisations are exposed to the temptation
especially in competitive market-places. There is a question, of
course, about whether organisational independence is ever a possibility
in any commercial, public-private contracted, or government-funded
organisation.
Reports
of partiality are not always based on direct evidence. Even when
they are, there is variability some schools are more manipulative
than others. Few reliable claims are made concerning the prevalence
of such abuse. And there are as many pressures against this kind
of bias as for it: any manager with good sense knows that there
is little to be gained from, for example, plonking kids in courses
they dont actually want or need. And students know when it
happens (in studies based on direct observation, it is they
who tell us).
However,
there are more subtle and less visible ways to play learners against
funding. Putting 16 year-olds through expert procedures,
which they have little opportunity to question, is an especially
pernicious abuse. Learners have fewer ways of noticing it. Claims
to impartiality should never be taken at face value.
No
local manager can afford to ignore these possibilities. And the
green papers proposals may intensify the risks. Kids will
recklessly surf on the ICT platforms it advocates. And any of the
network of helpers it advocates can act with bias - whether personal
or institutional.
Youth
Matters seeks safeguards. Even at local levels there will be
central-service managements; and they will develop performance
indicators including standards for impartiality. (Although,
whether such indicators are more helpful than relying on well-positioned
good sense, has become very much a moot point.)
But
we can do more than this. A local programme manager can take a radically
different approach. It involves, again, asking a supplementary question.
The question is not so much about unbiased-coverage - what
should we be telling them?. It looks instead to learning-processes
- how can they know they can trust it?. Work on processes
enables learners to be canny enough to clock any garden path or
blind alley we point them to.
In
programme-development terms this means helping learners to recognise
the processes by which they learn - enquiring, sorting, probing,
explaining. These are thinking skills; the Cafés CPI Papers
calls them learning verbs (for access see where
now?).
Curriculum
is full of learning verbs. A useful 14-19 curriculum would engage
them. Historical and scientific method could helpfully feature,
as could the introduction of useful psychology and philosophy. Integration
might show how all four can help a person in his or her life - in
a shared scheme of work. And, once acquired, command of learning
processes serves a person life-long and in all her or his
life roles.
The implications for local programming are radical. There is no
short step to bringing about this kind of change - Youth Matters
acknowledges this. But, by insisting on the need to go local,
it also positions middle managers where they can develop useful
programmes.
Curriculum will play an increasingly important part in the reforms.
Learning processes and the way they work out in life-relevant
learning, in transfer-of-learning and in life-long-learning
badly needs more curriculum-development. Conventional careers education
is in no position to cope. A Tomlinson curriculum would.
Indeed, these reforms are not achievable in any other way.
3.
consolidation and integration. A free-standing careers
service would have had a different relationship with childrens
trusts. Some its supporters warn against integration;
they look instead for partnership (for the pros and
cons see where now?).
Both
partnership and integration are organisational structures. Advocates
of partnerships urge the value of stability - afforded by maintaining
boundaries between bilaterally-contracting organisations. Whereas
organisational networks look for multilateral links - more sources
of help. But then, boundaries are more durable: people can count
on continuity in the organisation. While links are more flexible:
they are made, suspended and re-made - as changing opportunity and
needs suggest. On the other hand, contracts made by partnerships
are formal - set out on paper in advance. But hang on, much of what
is done in a network can be informal quickly agreed as and
when required.
This
issue cannot be settled on this kind of balance-sheet basis. It
is certainly not a do-or-dont decision for local managers:
integration is a design feature of the green-paper proposals. And
the proposals do not respond to evidence generated from within the
careers-work field, they look for evidence found elsewhere and answering
the question, which form of organisation best suits contemporary
conditions?. Better question; stronger idea.
From
the point-of-view of a local manager the choice is not really between
partnership and integration. Integration is, after all, an extension
rather than a suppression of partnership. It is more useful to think
of the difference in terms of - on the one hand - stronger boundaries
and on the other more open links. That makes it a
distinction between consolidation and integration (for an interactive
analysis see where now?).
Youth
Matters links integration to a case for holistic
responses to learning needs. There is something in this; but the
idea has a grittier use. The integers in integration
are where careers-work specialists make common ground with new partners.
Those locations are in the school or college and in the community.
(For an account of community help see where now?) They
integrate both professional and voluntary contacts. They link work
by careers specialists to work by other-than-career specialists.
Community-based mentors and school- or college-based citizenship
teachers will be key players.
Integration
puts learners in touch with other sources of knowledge and experience
than conventional careers education and guidance can muster. It
is, then, better understood as a way of engaging more resources.
Youth Matters is looking for a wider range of trusted and
credible sources of help. Some of them know about the the day-on-day
realities of working life better than we do. They draw on experience
rather than training. There is no superior and inferior authority
here just different forms of authority. All are capable of
being identified as credible, useful and accessible. Making those
contacts is a local manager's role. And integration gives managers
more people to work with.
It
is important not to confuse integration with infusion,
which was an attempt to get careers education cross curricular
- into the whole timetable. Its record is not good: it is impossible
to keep track of who is doing what; and thinking of careers work
as everybodys concern is pretty close to thinking of it as
nobodys. Integration makes negotiated links with carefully
identified partners, for well-defined projects, on the basis of
clearly-established authority, over an agreed time-scale. That is
not infusion.
There
may well be some aspects of careers-education-and-guidance which
should be consolidated rather than integrated. These are the aspects
which help learners to use systematic sources of information, to
make plans for foreseeable action, and to manage resulting application-and-selection
procedures. It is not a wide-ranging programme; but it is a necessary
one, and calls for specialist knowledge. The green paper ascribes
it to the partnership between PSHE and IAG (paras 168-9). But PSHE
is a frail and overloaded vessel. And, although heroically steered,
by mainly non-specialist helpers, it is hard to keep afloat on the
currents and vortices of economic, social and cultural change. Partnership
arrangements have not been able to gain enough purchase on curriculum
to build anything better. Local managers of integration will be
able to do better. But they should also ensure that the good ship
careers education stays afloat.
The
way local managers resolve any of these matters will depend on how
change impacts the locality, and on what sort of local resources
can be brought in to help. For example, the experience of mentoring
may give young learners more contact with the week-on-week experience
of work than any professional advisers would be able to offer
however many work visits they have made. And the usefulness of engaging
a post-Tomlinson curriculum will be more urgent in some areas than
in others. Change is a global phenomenon with no in-built global
response. Thats why we need local managers.
middle
managers as agents of change
I
am arguing that the driving energy for the reforms set out in the
green paper will be focussed around middle managers. They will be
neighbourhood-based people.
They are already in schools and colleges, youth centres and local
Connexions clusters. Some may have been careers coordinators, personal
advisers, youth workers, information professionals, or heads of
subject departments. That matters less than the fact that their
teams will comprise professional and voluntary helpers, from careers
work and other helping backgrounds.
What
matters more is that the green paper needs managers who know how
to map common ground with the academic authority of heads of department.
But they also need to be able to do that with volunteers asked to
engage an authority that - until now - they never knew they had.
It is going to call on a particular management style.
And
there is something that may not be entirely new to effective programme
managers. It is the need to maintain open and responsive links with
the neighbourhood. And to do this in terms from which all who are
involved can learn. It might well involved the use of local media.
But is not the sort of self-serving promotional activity that gets
listed under 'public relations'.
It
might be an overstatement to distinguish all of this from bureaucratic
management (managing boundaries) by calling it network
management (managing links); all organisations need both styles.
But the distinction works well-enough as a matter of emphasis. And
some such distinction may turn out to be critical to the practicability
of the proposals in Youth Matters.
It
may have been a while since some of our programme managers have
felt called upon to be so creatively autonomous. Agents of change
rather than maintainers of systems. Twenty years of policy impact
in schools has not prepared us well for these kinds of challenges.
The learning curve could be steep. But we know something about how
to support careers workers' independence of mind - when the system
gets too pushy (for an account of low system-orientation'
see where now?).
And
the green paper is both a challenge and a support. The support is
in the coherence of its ideas. It is certainly not a cut-and-paste
of back-of-envelope whims, over-influential canvassing, and hope-it-works
impulses. We wont understand it by looking for where it does
and does not serve particular interests. It is a sustained argument;
and, on every page, it is necessary to take one thing with another.
It is a rare thing: a genuinely interesting policy document. Though
over-cautious, it works hard on developing a comprehending diagnosis
of what is happening in work and society, and on a correspondingly
broadly conceived framework for the local reform of help. Local
managers can work with all of that.
back
to the beginning
You
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The Career-learning Café
www.hihohiho.com
in touch
WHERE
NOW?
an annotated
version of this
article, in pdf format
Integrated
Information, Advice and Guidance the pros and
cons of integration
Youth
in the Community how community can be involved
Getting
to Grips with Priorities for Careers Work interactive
analysis of consolidation and integration
The
CPI Papers what are we going to do about careers
Helping Personal Advisers
Working with Systems how careers workers learn independence
of mind
other
articles in this series:
'which
way is forward?' on the changing social and cultural
landscape
'a bridge too far' on
the mutual dependence between Connexions and Tomlinson
also,
watch out for...
coordinating
your network a guide to working with local networks
CPI-y: what are we going to do about careers? network
management why network management is a key concept
both sponsored
by Essex, Southend and Thurrock Connexions
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back to www.hihohiho.com
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