Flying high with the best careers advice

The most important thing in giving careers guidance is to get to know the boys well. You can take some information from profiling but it doesn’t replace personal contact
Chispa Prini-Garcia, head of careers, Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh

With growing opportunities in a global economy, higher education courses expanding, university requirements constantly changing and gap years becoming more sophisticated, there’s a lot for children to consider when it comes close to leaving school. No wonder that careers guidance is a growing field and essential if a student is to make a fully informed decision as to what subjects they should study at school and what they should aim to do when they walk out the school gates for the last time.

“Things are more complex now,” says Katherine Skinner, a careers guidance manager at Inspiring Futures, a Surrey-based foundation. “Other issues, such as finance, have implications for people’s choices and it’s also more of a global market. Someone might want to study abroad and we have to help them with that. We also help international students make their decisions.”

The Inspiring Futures Foundation (www.inspiringfutures.org.uk) is a not-for-profit organisation that’s been working with young people for the past 60 years. Through its Futurewise, Expanding Horizons and Careerscope programmes, the foundation helps around 100,000 young people every year make informed choices about their futures. It does so using a broad range of tools including dedicated careers professionals who keep abreast of the changing world, as well as computer-based tools, psychometric profiling, skills development courses and practical industry experience.

“Students in school deserve independent, impartial advice,” says Katherine. “They need to be aware of what else is out there. That’s the value of partnering with a service like our own.”

Delivering its services under the moniker of the Independent Schools Careers Service Organisation (ISCO), it’s little surprise that Inspiring Futures has traditionally catered to the independent school sector. It’s now offering its services to state schools but is just beginning to become a player in this sector. In the meantime, more than half of the independent schools in the UK use its services. Merchiston Castle, an independent boys school in Edinburgh, is one of them.   

“ISCO provides Merchiston with expert support,” says Chispa Prini-Garcia, head of careers at the school. “I call upon them if I have a particularly difficult pupil or parent and then they do interviews and meetings to advise the best action plan.

A career taster

“I also use their Expanding Horizons program, where our boys can have a small taster of particular fields of interest to them... but the best help is to know that they’re there to answer any question about this ever growing field.”

At Merchiston, the boys start thinking about the choices for their future when they’re 15. Prini-Garcia runs one-to-one interviews to find out what ideas the boys have, what their family backgrounds might be (“if both parents are medics, for example, that might influence their decision,” she says) and measures their reactions to questions and suggestions. While acknowledging the usefulness of the dedicated tools and services available to pupils she believes that a personal touch plays a key role in successful guidance.

“The most important thing in giving careers guidance is to get to know the boys well. If you don’t know them then how can you advise them?” she says. “You can take some information from profiling but it doesn’t replace personal contact. A pupil may be less intelligent but compensate for that by being incredibly hard working and driven. You cannot get these qualities from a test.”

Personalised advice

It’s not always easy to give such a personalised service, but the importance of having dedicated careers professionals imparting knowledge to young people can hardly be over egged. Parents inevitably play, or try to play, an influential role in the decisions made by their children. But parents, and even teachers, may not always be armed with the best information.

“We find that the information parents and teachers often have is out of date. It’s really important that teachers have training to keep their understanding and knowledge current and correct,” says Katherine. “For example, to do a medical degree 20 years ago you needed to have three science A-levels. Now all medical schools will accept a non-science subject and welcome applicants with other skills. That’s a major shift and if people are giving advice based on past information they may be giving bad advice.”

Around 94 per cent of pupils at Merchiston go on to higher education and the push towards further study is typical of many independent schools. Much of the careers guidance is therefore skewed to helping pupils decide what they want to pursue and what subjects will get them there.

“Students need help moving from into the sixth form. The combination of subjects they do is critical to what they’re going to do at university. It’s a key transition time, and again in sixth form,” says Katherine.

As well as focusing more closely on higher education, the level of help and care in careers guidance certainly appears to be more in-depth in independent schools than in state schools. Just a quick browse through the websites of fee-paying schools shows the emphasis on careers counselling, subject choice, careers fairs and crucial contact with the outside world to learn and understand the options available in different industries.

State pupils disgruntled

The state sector, by comparison, has struggled with implementing different strategies over the years with varying degrees of success. Recent research conducted by Inspiring Futures among 14-18 year olds in state schools showed that 68 per cent of pupils believe more useful careers guidance is needed in schools, and a quarter of those feel that a lot more useful guidance is needed.

Comprehensive careers guidance doesn’t come cheap and state schools don’t always have the resources to offer the sort of dedicated help that independent schools can. But whatever type of school your child is at, it’s important to help them work out what they want to do and not impose on them what you want them to do. Parents are often the final jigsaw piece in the careers guidance picture.

“Parents need to make a real effort to know their children and not live vicariously through them. You have to give them the chance to do their own thing and to trust them,” says Prini-Garcia. That’s the sort of help that doesn’t cost anything and might just have the biggest impact.