A better way to support young people with their careers...

I used to work in a company that ran a number of Connexions contracts and I confess, I was not a great believer.  The performance indicators were too blunt and ended up concentrating 90% of the focus on the NEET figure - those not in education, employment or training.  Commendable though it is to try desperately hard to reduce the NEET figure below the scandalous figure of 10%, it can't be the only focus of careers support.

I've just had a look at the websites, Plotr (.co.uk) and U-Explore (.com) and am very impressed.  No doubt, there are plenty of others that are trying to help young people be more informed.  There is already quite a bit of support available online. 

I'm up for more local solutions to the challenge of providing young people with career support, rather than big national schemes.   Localism can work, especially now that schools are getting so much better at working together.

Universities running MBA courses (ok - I know they charge a fortune) measure the percentage of their students who get into fab jobs within x months of completing the course.  They also measure the average increase in salary of students in the jobs they get when they graduate. The Ofsted budget won't rise to inspecting how appropriately placed each student is with regard to what they do when they leave.  But schools could team together and write their own key performance indicators for this area - and they could inspect each other. 

If you haven't come across Challenge Partners, they adopt a similar, rigorous approach where they inspect each other's schools.  I think there are about 230 schools operating in this partnership, split up into local areas. 

If schools set themselves some quite demanding goals with regard to preparing their young people for the workplace, they would also want to stay in touch with their young people when they leave.  This costs money, of course, but the great public schools think it is hugely worthwhile - and not just to get to the wallets of uber rich alumni.  They get value from the networks they create, the sense of collaboration that comes from a wider view of the school community. 

Schools major on the development of children and young people.  Exams and qualifications are only part of that development.  Placing more emphasis on how children and young people fare when they leave school will lead to a broader focus when they are actually at school.  This will help to mitigate against the prevailing tendency for schools to become exam factories.

A golf pro teaches you to follow through with your swing quite precisely and fully after you have hit the ball.  Funnily enough, what you do after you have hit the ball has a profound effect on how you hit the ball.  There is a metaphor in there somewhere.