Young people face summer without careers advice as Connexions Service axed (Twickenham & Richmond Liberal Democrats)

Young people face summer without careers advice as Connexions Service axed

July 9, 2011 5:28 PM

• [Jul 08] CONNEXIONS, the council's careers advice service for young people, is about to close down after severe budget cuts, leaving this summer's school and college leavers with no advice service.

The service is run, under contract from six south London councils, by educational consultancy CfBT, which has indicated that they can no longer keep the service going for the reduced funding being made available by councils. The government is proposing to estabilish a new careers service, but this will not be up and running until September 2012.

Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Malcolm Eady said: "Getting good independent careers advice and guidance immediate after exam results are published can have a positive life lasting effect on some young peoples' future. This can be a chaotic and very stressful time and having access to good quality advice is important. The contract with CfBT has broken down, but the Council still has a budget for the service, so I call on the Council to quickly make sure that career advisers are in place when the exam results are published in 6 to 7 weeks time.

We should then, if necessary working independently of other boroughs, make sure we have an advice service in place for the next academic year, so that young people in our schools and colleges get good independent advice when they are selecting courses for the next part of their education."

• Note: The Connexions service was outsourced to CfBT, a charitable education consultancy and service organisation, by six boroughs - Bromley, Croydon, Kingston, Merton, Richmond and Sutton. Richmond receives funding for this service from the Government. Last summer the Government cut some of this grant, and at the beginning of the year they reduced the funding further when they introduced the Early Intervention Grant. This grant no longer ring fenced money for particular services and so allowed Councils to cut funding to some of the services.

The Education Bill 2010-11, currently going through the Lords, will make schools assume the responsibility for the provision of independent and impartial careers guidance from September 2012, including information on all of the options available from 16 to 19, for example, apprenticeships. So the Council has only one year left to run the service. Schools will be supported by a new national careers service. As yet there are no details about how this will operate; it was due to partially begin in September 2011 and offer a full menu of services from April 2012.

Many Education Authorities, including Richmond, have taken the opportunity to cut the amount of money they spent on the Connexions service. These cuts were so severe that CfBT could not longer provide a professional service. This has resulted in the staff facing redundancy and there being no service available for our young people when they obtain their exam results this summer.

• Connexions in Richmond upon Thames [council website]

• Losing Connexions could cost Richmond's young people jobs [RTT Jul 15]

http://www.connexions-direct.com/

• Who will advise young people if Connexions goes? [Guardian Aug 03 2010]

• Councils wipe out one sixth of careers services [C&YP Now Jun 24]