A message and call to action from the Jan Ellis, CEO of the CDI.
In the last 12 months, there has been considerable talk about skills shortages in the career development sector.
This has ranged from conversations about the lack of qualified careers advisers looking to work in adult guidance and on NCS contracts in England, to a shortage of qualified and registered careers advisers to work in schools and colleges.
We also know from conversations with colleagues in SDS (Scotland) and Careers Wales, attracting careers advisers to train and stay in the sector is an increasing priority.
In England, where the current emphasis is on achieving the Gatsby benchmarks in schools and colleges, the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) is looking to invest £2.5M in ‘personal careers guidance’ projects. While this is excellent news for the sector, the CDI would like to see a significant percentage of this investment directed towards the initial training of careers advisers in the form of bursaries, as one way to address the current skills shortage.
We know that our lobbying of DfE, the CEC and government bodies in Wales and Scotland will be much more effective if we are able to provide hard evidence of skills shortages. With this aim in mind we have created a short Survey Monkey; Read more