Education

Focus Areas

Good Career Guidance

Since 2013 Gatsby has focused on career guidance for young people in secondary schools and further education and training. In recent years we have expanded our interest to include career guidance for adults.

Good career guidance is a necessity for social mobility: those without significant social capital or family connections to draw upon have the most to gain from a strong career guidance system. With the current transformation of technical education in England ensuring high quality technical pathways into rewarding career options, it is vital that good career guidance is embedded in education, so that young people are fully equipped to make decisions about their next steps.

In 2013, Gatsby commissioned Sir John Holman to set out what career guidance in England would be like if it were good by international standards, resulting in the Good Career Guidance report in 2014. The eight Gatsby Benchmarks first defined in the report serve as a framework for world-class careers provision in secondary schools and colleges. They have been adopted as part of the Government's Careers Strategy, statutory guidance for schools and guidance for colleges. In addition, The Careers & Enterprise Company now supports the implementation of the Benchmarks in education with a national network of Careers Hubs and further targeted support, resources and training.

The eight Gatsby Benchmarks of Good Career Guidance are:

1. A stable careers programme
2. Learning from career and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each young person
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experiences of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance

Click here to explore each Benchmark in detail.

Good Career Guidance: The Next Ten Years

In 2024, after a two-year programme of stakeholder engagement, consultation and research, the Gatsby Benchmarks were updated for 2024 and beyond. Read more at our Good Career Guidance: The Next Ten Years programme page.

good career guidance for adults

Career decisions do not stop once someone leaves education at 18. They are taken throughout our lives and are crucial not only to our own wellbeing and prosperity, but also to that of our local community and national economy. We see career guidance for adults as a key means of tackling unemployment, underemployment and addressing the skills misalignment in this country.

We have therefore launched a programme of research to better understand what good career guidance for adults looks like. This programme of research includes the development of a typology of adult career guidance needs, followed by an analysis of the current landscape of adult career guidance in England and an international study to identify examples of best practice globally. Read more at our Good Career Guidace for Adults programme page.

 

Programmes

Piloting the Good Career Guidance benchmarks

Piloting the Good Career Guidance benchmarks

After the publication of Sir John Holman's Good Career Guidance Report, which first set out the framework of eight Gatsby Benchmarks, we began working with the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to pilot the framework in 16 schools and colleges. The pilot institutions were of varying types, sizes and Ofsted ratings and were challenged to work towards all eight Benchmarks over two years, with an evaluation tracking the impact of this activity until autumn 2019.

Embedding the Good Career Guidance benchmarks in schools and colleges

Embedding the Good Career Guidance benchmarks in schools and colleges

Good career guidance has never been more important. Changes in technology, the technical education system and in the labour market mean that the jobs available and the skills and qualifications needed to reach them are changing all the time. The COVID-19 pandemic has added further disruption, with a disproportionate impact on young people as they enter the labour market. Many skilled jobs require specific education and training, and young people need more support to make better-informed decisions about their future.