Decision details

The report explained that Lancashire Youth Council had been invited by the Education Scrutiny Committee to carry out a piece of research to find out young people's perspective on the routes to 14-19 education and training provision and to report their findings.

The Youth Council had now conducted their research through group discussion and by distributing a questionnaire to young people across Lancashire and had consulted 220 young people. A copy of the questionnaire was at Appendix A and the results of the consultation were at Appendix B to the report now presented.

Hal Meakin, Member of Lancashire Youth Council, drew attention to the finding that 31% of young people consulted felt that they did not know what provision was available to them, with the most attributed reason for this being lack of careers guidance in school.

It was noted that there had been varying level of responses from the twelve districts, indeed there had been no responses at all from four districts. Hal Meakin confirmed that there was a desire to carry out further research to gather a more representative response.

The Lancashire Youth Council had made the following recommendations:

i.  That provision for advice and guidance of 14-19 Education and Training should be of a high quality throughout the county. It was felt that, at present there did not appear to be a consistent approach.

ii.  In light of the findings from the questionnaire it may be beneficial to carry out a further piece of work focusing on the 31% of young people who were not aware of what routes were available to them and identifying how this could be resolved.

iii.  That the findings of the consultation be shared with the Lancashire Association of Secondary School Headteachers (LASSH) and Lancashire County Council Cabinet Members with whom the Lancashire Youth Council currently meet on a quarterly basis.

The Committee supported the recommendations and agreed that:

Recommendation i - that the words "and this could be investigated" be added to the last sentence. Bob Stott said that he would ask Jonathan Hewitt, Head of School Improvement, to provide an update on the models of provision provision of IAG (Information and Guidance) currently in use across the county for the next meeting of this Committee.

Recommendation ii - Hal Meakin confirmed that the Youth Council would carry out a further piece of work focusing on the 31% of young people who were not aware of what routes were available to them and identify how this could be resolved.

Recommendation iii – Bob Stott confirmed that the report would be presented to the LASSH Executive. It was noted that to some extent the findings were positive in that many young people, generally, knew where to go for information and advice, however, since the removal of the National Careers Advice service, particularly the funding, it was most important to maximise good quality Information and Guidance in a consistent manner. He was confident that Children Looked After would receive attention through the Youth Service, but there were other vulnerable young people in schools who needed face to face guidance and support, and this was a challenge

Resolved: That the recommendations of the Youth Council, as slightly amended and as set out above, be supported.