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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I support the amendment. There have been so many changes in the provision of careers services in recent years that it is difficult to keep up with them. My conversations with people in schools indicate that they have the same problem—they are not quite sure where the services are coming from. There is a clear distinction between careers education and careers advice. Both need to be of high quality. The Connexions service has had its limitations because it was set up very much with the emphasis on the less high achieving young person. It was limited in its capacity. Consequently, a great deal of careers advice was thrown back onto the schools and the careers teachers, many of whom took it on as an act of goodwill, or because the head had caught them at a weak moment—or perhaps because they had no choice, with a rather bossy head. They were unprepared for what they had to do. It is important to stand back a little and have a look, as this amendment suggests, now that there is a new body in place that is just beginning to come to terms with its duties, at exactly how careers advice operates and what quality is on offer. I should like even to extend it a little and have a look at what has grown up in the mean time: this rather ad hoc provision of careers education in schools, which has had to overlap, so to speak, and become not only careers education but also careers advice for many young people. I very much support what the amendment is trying to do.