Reform

WHO SAYS GUIDANCE IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA?

There are a lot of people with all kinds of interest in what careers work does. Some of these voices are in a better position to grab attention than others. It’s an issue, because the future of careers work will be shaped by who gets listened to, and who gets sidelined.

Bill argues that this means thinking about both who your work pays attention to, and who you get to pay attention to your work.

I see David Peck’s much-anticipated history of careers services is out. Nice timing: careers work is at yet another of its cross-roads; a sense-of-direction would come in handy.

turning point

But this turning point is different. It’s not just about structures: how careers work is located, managed and funded. It’s more important than that: we badly need to work out how, in a changing world, careers work continues to be useful. This time we must make the structures of provision answer to the dynamics of change.

There is no escape from news of global economics and its technologies. Nor of how individuals, families and neighbourhoods are left reeling from their impact. So we can’t hide from the fact that talk of career now evokes as much fear as hope. And we begin to grasp how background, culture and mobility figure in what people are in any position to do. We see people becoming more savvy about work-life balance. We notice them entertaining alternatives (sometimes criminal) to employment. We sense them becoming more suspicious of professional élites.

Change for our learners means change for us. There will be consequences. And they will stretch to our work at both extremes of social exclusion – among both the comfortably sequestered and the ruthlessly displaced. We need a bigger idea for careers work. And it will call on a wider range of people to make it work – from the gaol-house catwalk to the company board-room.

Did we ever really believe that careers education and guidance could go on more-or-less as it was? It is true that UK guidance got a recent round-of-applause, in a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. But that feel-good will not resolve the issues that the report raises – and several that it ignores.

issues and claims

And there are issues. Careers work has always been a service for learning, but it is now also an instrument of policy. Government hands down hard-edged targets that rarely fit the realities of our work. Careers work has always been driven by ideas, but it is located in institutions. And, as we allow ourselves to be driven by institutions, we find ourselves working with claims that we are in no position to deliver.

The claims vary, depending on who is trying to impress whom. Careers work, we say, is a good idea because it serves personal fulfilment and equal opportunity. But we must now also work with claims that it can jack up educational standards and nurture social stability. More than that, some people look to careers work for a pay-off in national competitiveness, and even in environmental protection. The rationale looks like a cut-and-paste of media headlines.

We need to know which way is forward. It won’t be easy. Careers work doesn’t move in a social vacuum. And, just as you get your signposts aligned, somebody will want to move them. There is no shortage of movers and shakers: among managers and fund-raisers; researchers, consultants and theorists; employers and admission tutors; politicos and their apparatchiks; professional-association people and (not necessarily the same thing) the advisers, teachers, mentors, and others who help, If your experience can usefully shape the future of careers work we need your work on this list.

getting heard

But it’s hard for some voices to get a hearing. Clout often counts for more than wisdom. Credible and significant perspectives get sidelined, because they have no big-time institutional backing, they speak locally rather than globally, and they tell of what helps rather than what fits some dominant agenda. Up-close-and-personal view-points get lost. Yet these are the ones that speak for the individuals, families and neighbourhood whose hopes and fears are most at stake.

Even David Peck’s history doesn’t cover all the angles. But he does have a big cast – featuring not only Winston Churchill but also The Salvation Army. And who do you think proved to be the real trailblazer – the professional politician or the up-close-and-personal volunteer? Read the book, and surprise yourself.

Career-learning Café talk examines both ‘the clout’ and ‘the credible’. That is how careers workers will reclaim responsibility for their work. It is what we must do, if we mean to think for ourselves, understand change, speak truth to power - and know which way is forward. It is the basis for reform. The alternative would be to entrench the status quo; and David Peck’s book would be its obituary.

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more about the case for reform
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David's book:
David Peck: Careers Services: History, Policy and Practice in The UK. (Routledge Falmer)

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