Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools and colleges in Ashfield constituency meet (a) any and (b) all of the eight Gatsby career advice benchmarks.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Careers & Enterprise Company’s ‘State of the Nation’ report highlighted the results of over 500 schools that self-evaluated their careers provision against the Gatsby Benchmarks. Around half of these schools were achieving at least two of the eight benchmarks, although a fifth of schools were not achieving any of the benchmarks. The report is available to view here: wwwcareersandenterprise.co.uk/news/state-nation-report-reveals-route-success-schools.

The careers strategy and our updated statutory guidance for schools both promote Compass, a free online tool (developed by The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and The Careers & Enterprise Company) for schools to evaluate and monitor improvements in their careers provision against the benchmarks. More information about Compass is available here: https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/schools-colleges/about-compass.

A good way to highlight the importance of Gatsby Benchmarks is for individual MPs to contact the schools in their constituency.