My Lords, I had not intended to speak on Amendment 17, but I was on the Social Mobility Select Committee along with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the issue of careers guidance came up very strongly throughout our year of investigations and featured strongly in recommendation 2. Our report came out in April last year and the government response was published in July. I would like to read part of that response and then refer to a piece of evidence that we received from Sir Michael Wilshaw. The response, and I am cutting away a lot of it, says that,
“we will make the Gatsby benchmarks the focus of the statutory guidance that supports schools and colleges to implement the careers duty. This is in direct response to calls from schools to make it clear what government is expecting from them in terms of careers education”.
The tone of the response is pretty clear: the Government are saying, more or less, “Yes, we will do more”. It makes no sense, then, not to measure it, and I agree wholly with what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said. I distinctly remember that Sir Michael Wilshaw made it very clear in his excellent evidence that Ofsted is already carrying out the assessment work on careers guidance, so not to include it in the marking scheme seems not to be using the fullness of the evidence and the data that are being gathered. Accordingly, I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the whole of Amendment 17.