The Provision of Careers Guidance in Welsh Schools

Careers guidance for young people is regarded as important for supporting positive labour market outcomes. In particular, by helping young people to develop their career management competencies and their roles as learners and workers, careers guidance can help reduce the number of young people who fall outside of the education, training or employment system and from becoming ‘NEETS’. While the practice of career guidance implicitly reflects a commitment to social equality, there are concerns that the provision of career services may not be taken up by those with the greatest need. Previous research suggests that higher achieving pupils are more likely to receive careers guidance interventions (Anderson et al. 2004), while learners from under-privileged and ethnic minority backgrounds may have relatively limited access to educational, vocational and employment information (Liu and Middleton; 1995; Brown et al. 1991; Watson and Stead, 1990). This paper examines these issues in the context of the provision of careers advice to school pupils in Wales. Methods


Introduction
In the UK, the transition from learning to work for young people is becoming increasingly complex and young individuals face a daunting array of challenges. First, they have to navigate a complex range of educational and vocational choices as they progress towards their working lives (Dorsett and Lucchino 2015;Hutchinson and Kettlewell 2015). Furthermore, the period of transition from learning to work is increasing and once these individuals enter the workplace, they are faced with a dynamic labour market where their capacity to adapt and make appropriate career changes remains critical (Bimrose and Brown 2015;Ohme and Zacher 2015). Given the complexity of the transition between school to work, school to postcompulsory education, and the demands of contemporary labour market, the provision of adequate and timely careers information, advice and guidance (henceforth careers guidance) plays a critical role. Careers guidance is deemed a significant resource that not only nurtures the foundations of a healthy labour market, but also supports individuals, employers and society at large.
Evidence shows that the value of careers guidance is more beneficial if individuals start receiving this support early in their educational life (Morgan et al. 2007). It has been argued that providing careers guidance in schools can help young people make an effective transition from education to work and to build skills necessary for managing their participation in the labour and learning markets (Andrews and Hooley 2017). Careers guidance in schools has also been found to have significant benefits in terms of engaging young people in learning, retaining them in school and helping them to achieve good academic qualifications (Hooley et al. 2014, p.153). In particular, it has been highlighted that by helping young people to develop their career management competencies and their roles as learners and workers earlier on, careers guidance can help reduce the number of young people who fall outside of the education, training or employment system and from becoming 'NEETS' -Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). Participation in careers guidance at school has even been associated with higher subsequent earnings (Kashefpakdel and Percy, 2016).
Within the UK, there are concerns that the provision of career services is not sufficient to address the needs of young people. In 2010, the UK government withdrew funding for the Connexions Network which had provided a dedicated careers guidance service for young people. Within England, the 2011 Education Act gave schools and teachers the responsibility to arrange independent careers guidance for their students. They have been supported in this role by the establishment of the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) in 2014. However, there is concern that this advisory body will be unable to fill the gap left by Connexions and that there will be a decline in the level of provision of careers guidance in schools (see Moote and Archer, 2018). In 2017 the UK government published its new careers strategy 1 , which centres on the achievement by schools of 8 Gatsby benchmarks that define excellence with respect to careers guidance. CEC will continue to provide external support to schools, who by September 2018 will be expected to nominate a Careers Leader who will be responsible for the school's Careers Programme and to deliver on the benchmarks. The effectiveness of these programmes will continue to be inspected by Ofsted and measured with respect to school level pupil destination data. Since 2016, additional resource has been made available to 12 Opportunity Areas characterised by low levels of social mobility. The funds were established to support additional interventions targeted at those within Year Groups 7-13 who are at an increased risk of becoming NEET, including those with SEN and disabilities. The new Careers Strategy also highlights the development of additional resources improve careers guidance for those with SEN and disabilities.
Within Wales, Careers Wales is responsible for providing an independent and impartial careers information, advice and guidance service. Careers Wales is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Welsh Government. Careers Wales was established in 2012 through the merger of regional companies that also operated through the Careers Wales brand. Previous research on the provision and take-up of careers guidance within schools has generally been based upon voluntary surveys, such as the studies of Scottish school leavers undertaken by Furlong (2006) or the educational choices of 13/14 year olds within England undertaken by Haynes et al (2013) and the national survey of 13,000 Year 11 students in England undertaken by Moote and Archer (2016). This paper utilises population level education data for Wales linked to administrative data collected by Careers Wales to provide a comprehensive 'national level' examination of the receipt of careers guidance in Wales. Our focus is upon pupils in academic years 10-11, also referred to as Key Stage 4 and our analysis explores which pupils are more or less likely to receive careers advice within Welsh schools.
Specifically, the study examines if demographic and educational factors are associated with the probability of receiving careers guidance within schools regarding options in education and work. In doing so, this study highlights if careers services are accessible to those pupils with the greatest need. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section two reviews the literature on careers guidance and labour market outcomes, and discusses the significance of careers guidance within schools. The third section describes the data sets used in the study. The fourth section provides a descriptive analysis of the data. Section five describes the methodological approach of the study and presents the results of the multivariate logistic regression and section six concludes the paper.

Careers guidance and labour market outcomes -the context
In recent years, the importance of careers guidance programmes in supporting labour market outcomes are increasingly being acknowledged. This has been mainly linked to the changing economic landscape, specifically after the 1980s. It has been argued that the labour market 2 http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/static.live.careerswales.net/AnnualReport1415_full_FINAL.pdf has become increasingly individualised and young individuals today are subject to varied kinds of uncertainties (Giddens 1991). Qualifications have become increasingly important for obtaining employment and if young people remain in post-compulsory education, they are less likely to become unemployed (Bradley and Lenton 2007). Young people also increasingly have to commute away from their home regions to find work (Haynes et al. 2013). It is believed that meaningful information on educational and occupational avenues will stimulate the desire of young people to remain active in post-compulsory education and training and will enable potential labour market entrants to make well-informed learning and career choices. Careers guidance in this respect is seen to be a significant tool that can enhance careers aspirations of youth, which are associated to their ultimate occupational attainment (Tangri and Jenkins 1986).
Many studies have provided conceptual and empirical support for economic benefits of career guidance and have identified it as a vital ingredient of fulfilling the needs of human development (e.g., Donohue and Patton 1998;Bimrose and Wilden 1994;Herr 1992).
Specifically, Krumboltz (1996) argued that 'the economic welfare of the nation depends on its citizens learning career relevant skills and characteristics and learning to adapt to a constantly changing work environment'. The Lisbon agenda for growth and jobs also infers a strong support for introducing career guidance interventions by endorsing that people should understand how labour markets operate and have the necessary information, skills, and abilities to effectively manage labour market changes for meaningful participation in the labour market (Cedefop 2008). This shows that interventions that promote labour market intelligence and increase the knowledge pool of existing and aspiring labour market participants are of potential importance for improving both individual life-chances and overall labour market conditions.
Although career management interventions have largely been seen to have a direct economic impact on individuals through improving their employability, broader benefits of career management skills have also been suggested. For instance, previous research has emphasised the contribution of career management in reducing the costs associated with ill-health and criminal justice by boosting an individual's likelihood of getting better employment, higher income levels and overall quality of life (Mayston 2002cited in Bridgstock 2009). Similarly, Hughes et al. (2002) in their review of more than 40 studies, investigating the economic effects of career education provision, highlighted that careers-related information achieved moderate-to-high level economic benefits through improved student course choice, course retention and learning outcomes and in the wider population through lower unemployment rates, reduced job-search times, lower worker turnover rates and improved productivity (Bridgstock, 2009, p. 38). Evidence has also been provided which shows that career guidance increases occupational knowledge and self-esteem of individuals (Otte and Sharpe 1979), improves their career maturity (Hamdani 1977), and helps them take a pro-active approach about vocational issues (Cherry and Gear 1987). Similarly, exposure to careers education is associated with an increase in knowledge on various aspects, such as the world of work, nonfamily information sources, planning, and job interview preparations (Chamberlain 1982).
Career guidance interventions have been demonstrated to play a significant role in increasing knowledge of self, improve confidence and direction of career goals, and help shape more realistic expectations about careers (Donohue and Patton 1998).
In line with the changing educational and career landscape, the remit and role of careers guidance for youth is also undergoing a rapid change to align with the evolving expectations of young people. The remit of careers guidance has been broadened from performing its traditional role of identifying the aptitude of leaners in education to encompass a variety of functions which support individuals in making informed careers choices, achieving resilience to handle change in individuals' careers more effectively and raising the aspirations and awareness of learners (Watts and Kidd 2000). The role of careers guidance has been highlighted for qualitatively distinct stages in a young individual's life, with each stage being unique and separate. The main premise being that the guidance is widely accessible, adequate, and timely.
The significance of the provision of careers guidance in schools can be linked to John Dewey's (1963) seminal work on cognitive development movement in which he emphasised the school's role in promoting students' cognitive, personal, social, and moral development.
However, its rising importance in the UK is primarily linked to the economic argument that the United Kingdom as a whole needs individuals to make well-informed career choices throughout their lives. Schools provide the basic platform that ensures high-quality education for all students to build a skilled and engaged future generations of citizens that can keep the economy, communities, and families healthy and productive. The economic benefits of introducing careers guidance from an early stage pivot on the arguments of encouraging and retaining pupils in post-compulsory education to achieve better performance in the labour market (Andrews and Hooley 2017;Hooley et al. 2014). Careers guidance has been recognised as an enabling intervention that mitigates the challenges of student transition from school to post-compulsory education by minimising the influence of factors that are known to affect this transition, choosing appropriate courses, and succeeding as higher education learners.
A more encompassing view providing support for the provision of careers guidance in schools suggests that careers advice is often a key source of information for young individuals and their parents, especially if they belong to families who have a history of unemployment or low-skilled employment and/or no experience of higher education (Haynes et al. 2013). It has been demonstrated that pupils from lower socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds are much less likely to participate in post-compulsory education (Chowdry et al. 2013), because lower SES pupils do not achieve as highly as higher SES pupils throughout education and, Parents' labour market status is seen to strongly predict children's economic well-being and there is significant cross-generational correlation in the jobs undertaken by parents and their off-spring (d 'Addio 2007). Research also supports an association between parental worklessness (persistent and temporary) and children's abilities, aspirations, behaviour and attitudes towards education, and eventually their transition to employment. A notable contribution in this respect comes from Schoon et al.'s (2012) study which suggests that worklessness of parents contributes significantly to children's lack of cognitive abilities and educational attainment at an early age (Key Stage 2 assessments), which continues through to GCSE (Key Stage 4 assessments) and then contributes to their increased risk of being NEET.
Although the analysis acknowledges that the inter-linkages between these factors are complex, the study highlights that worklessness of parents is a major indirect contributor to poor educational and employment outcomes of children and that its effect increases if pupils simultaneously face other types of socio-economic disadvantage, such as low parental education and income. Schoon et al.'s (2012) research, thus, is instrumental in highlighting that the wider range of risks that children and their families face due to their dis-advantaged position in the society must be tackled effectively to avoid the likelihood of inter-generational transmission of socio-economic dis-advantage causing poor outcomes.
Eligibility for Free School Meals (eFSM)  Careers guidance can therefore serve as the protective factor that might enable children and young people to overcome the initial scarring from their experiences at school and home, including aspects like parental worklessness. It can also function as the buffer against the risk of inter-generational transmission of worklessness for young people by improving their likelihood of making their transition from school to work and reducing their likelihood of being NEET. Specifically, the early provision of careers-related services within schools may play a key role in shaping the thinking about possible careers, challenging deeply embedded attitudes and perceptions and raising awareness of the diverse range of educational and employment opportunities (Haynes et al. 2013).
Schools are increasingly responsible for the provision of guidance to students in their career development and are expected to provide a range of activities to suit pupils' needs. Provision often includes a face-to-face service offering advice and guidance through individual interviews and/or through group sessions, which in turn may either be stand alone or integrated into curriculum delivery. It has been vehemently proposed that careers guidance initiatives should be made 'available for all young people whilst giving particular priority to those who are at most risk of disadvantage' (Darling et al. 2000, p. 5). Research however suggests that not everyone has equal access to careers-related interventions. Recent evidence for England suggests that careers education in England is currently patterned in ways that may be working to promote inequalities relating to gender, ethnicity and social class. Based upon a large scale survey of Year 11 pupils in England, Archer (2016, 2018) reveal that females, ethnic minorities and students from disadvantaged social backgrounds (with very low levels of cultural capital) are less likely to report that they have received careers education. Earlier research has also provided similar evidence in relation to gender (Lufkin et al. 2007) and ethnicity (Brown et al. 1991;Watson and Stead 1990). In Scotland, unequal access to careers guidance has also been associated with learners' level of qualifications, attainment, and absenteeism, suggesting that those with the greatest need exhibit an increased risk of being unsupported within schools (Anderson et al. 2004).

Data
To Lastly, keeping in touch strategies are many and signify interactions in which contact is made with clients, either in person or electronically. These represent a log of (automated or manual) electronic communication with clients which ranges from attempted telephone contacts, email correspondence to and from clients, SMS to and from clients, and whether clients attended a prescribed service. Within any academic years, pupils may have been in receipt of multiple interventions provided by Careers Wales. These detailed records are therefore aggregated up to the level of individuals so that they can be combined with pupil level data contained within the NPD. Linkage was undertaken on the basis of de-identified linkable personal identifier numbers derived for both data sets on the basis of name, gender, address and date of birth (see Jones et al. 2014 for details on the linkage process).  As a result, students who are identified to have higher levels of special education needs (i.e., statemented) consistently receive more of the careers-related services (95% in Year 10 and 84% in year 11) than students who have either relatively less SEN requirements (schools action or school action plus) or simply do not have any special education needs.

Descriptive Analysis
The incidence of receiving careers advice seems to be largely influenced by pupils' academic abilities and their absences from school. Our analysis suggests that students who achieve less than 200 points in their GCSEs are the ones most likely to receive careers services in schools (85% in Year 10 and 83% in Year 11). Contrarily, pupils with more than 400 GCSE points are the least likely to receive the services (50% in Year 10 and 39% in Year 11). However, it can be seen that being in receipt of careers guidance does not decline monotonically with increasing levels of educational attainment. In terms of pupils' absences, 82% of pupils who are persistently absent (absent for over 20% of half day sessions) benefit from the services of Careers Wales compared to 67% among those who are not persistently absent. We have also found variations in terms of the types of careers services received in relation to pupils' characteristics, and the associated descriptive statistics are provided in Table 3.
Although the data comfortably highlights that the most common type of careers services received by pupils are interviews followed by group sessions, there is considerable variation in the rate of incidence for interviews and groups sessions according to pupils' characteristics.
The results reveal a strong relationship between careers-related interviews and pupils' it can be inferred that more intensive interventions providing opportunities for one-to-one interactions (i.e., interviews and keeping in touch) are more focussed upon those who are in need.

Multivariate Analysis
To examine if the likelihood of receiving careers guidance is influenced by pupils' characteristics, we ran a series of logistic regressions that model the probability of receiving careers guidance among our sample of school pupils. Models of the following general form are estimated: The dependent variable CAREERS identifies whether or not pupils receive careers guidance in schools. Our key explanatory variables measure pupils' characteristics -demographics (  Model 3 demonstrates the likelihood of being in receipt of the services of Careers Wales is higher among those with higher levels of absenteeism, with the estimated odds ratio increasing to 3.429*** among those who were absent for more the 40% of the school year. Having an unauthorised absence is also estimated to have a separate and additional effect of    Finally, Table 5 examines whether pupils' characteristics influence the likelihood of them receiving different types of careers interventions in schools as derived from our full specification (model 5). The results indicate differences in the types of careers interventions received by students in some cases. Intuitively, the analysis indicates that pupil characteristics are stronger predictors of the likelihood of being in receipt of the services of Careers Wales for those interventions that provide one-to-one support (e.g., Interviews and Keeping in Touch with Clients) than interventions that are delivered to a group of children. For example, pupils' with eFSM are more likely to receive their guidance in interview sessions (odd ratio of 1.465**) and are more likely to be followed-up using keeping in touch strategies (odds ratio of 1.384***). However, eFSM status is not a predictor of pupils participating in Group Sessions. Similarly, both SEN requirements and GCSE attainment are also not found to be predictors of pupils participating in Group Sessions. The association between absenteeism and the likelihood of receiving a particular type of careers guidance however reveals arguably an obvious, but nonetheless important finding. In terms of Interviews and Keeping in Touch with clients, those pupils with higher levels of absenteeism are more likely to be in receipt of the services provided by Careers Wales. However, by virtue of their absence, these pupils are less likely to participate in Group Sessions. Pupils who have an unauthorised absence are also less likely to have participated in Group Work sessions.

Concluding remarks
Recent survey evidence for England has revealed that less than two-thirds of Year 11 pupils received careers advice and that this support is not reaching those who are most in need (Archer and Moote, 2016). Specifically, girls, minority ethnic, working-class and lowerattaining students are all significantly less likely to report receiving careers education.
Utilising the data from the Welsh National Pupil Database combined with the anonymised client information held by Careers Wales for years 2012-2015, this paper has sought to examine the provision of careers guidance in Welsh schools. Specifically, the paper has examined the incidence with which pupils in Years 10 and 11 (Key Stage 4) receive careers guidance and whether careers guidance is accessible to those pupils who are the most in need of such services.
The analysis of administrative data reveals that in Wales approximately 85% of pupils received some form of contact with the Careers Wales during Year 10, falling to just over half during Year 11. The final year of compulsory education may therefore not provide a 'complete' picture as to who is in receipt of careers guidance. In terms of equality of access to careers guidance, our analysis demonstrates that whilst the provision of careers guidance in Welsh schools by Careers Wales is not gendered, certain minority ethnic groups are less likely to benefit from these services. Thirdly, the analysis confirms empirically that Careers Wales is fulfilling its remit of providing increased levels of support to those with Special Educational Needs. Finally, in terms of supporting those pupils with the greatest needs, the research demonstrates that pupils who are eligible for free school meals (eFSM), have lower levels of academic attainment and higher levels of absenteeism are each more likely to be in receipt of support from Careers Wales.
There are limitations to the analysis. For example, the validity of eFSM measure as a proxy for pupils' socio-economic status is debated. Concerns are raised about the validity of this binary measure itself, and how it is used as a proxy for socio-economic disadvantage.
Although eFSM pupils are almost exclusively from low-income families, not all pupils from low-income families are identified as being eFSM (Taylor 2018;Ilie et al. 2017). It must also be acknowledge that Careers Wales is not the only provider of careers guidance activities within schools and inequities could exist in the provision and take-up of careers services 22 provide by other suppliers. Amidst concerns about the intergenerational transmission of socio-economic disadvantage and of the potential inequity in the take-up of careers guidance interventions, this study demonstrates that, through its assessment tools, Careers Wales appears to have been effective in achieving its remit of prioritising the delivery of its services to those with the greatest need.