The Careers Hubs pilot (2018-2020) tested a place-based network model designed to facilitate English schools and colleges delivering career guidance, measured primarily by adherence to eight benchmarks of good practice. Using a standardised measurement tool, career guidance in hub schools was observed to improve faster than a matched comparison…

Career readiness is an important short-term outcome of career guidance activities in England. This research (1) details the development of a career readiness measure and (2) tests the relationship between career guidance interventions and career readiness among secondary school students. The measure was piloted on pupils (Study 1, N = 1508) in…

A new form of narrative counselling for adolescents at risk of exclusion was piloted in 3 schools with 11 students between the ages of 13-14 years over a 6-7-week period. The intervention took into consideration that compared to adults, adolescents are more susceptible to being influenced by their immediate surroundings of home and school. A…

Psychological difficulties among young people are common. Various initiatives are being proposed in schools, yet no evidence-based data is available on how to address family difficulties (the most prevalent issues in school-based counselling). The current study examined the use of a two-component intervention based on the principles of Perceptual…

To develop a career is considered a central task for adolescents. The aim in the present study was to explore the content and process of career development and meaning making processes using a narrative approach. As a convenience sample, participants were 20 Italian students attending their last two years of high school and 23 English students…

Historically, responsibility for career education and guidance in English schools was shared between the school and an external careers service. The Education Act 2011 transferred responsibility for career guidance to schools and has created a need for the new role of a 'careers leader'. In this article, we report on research in 27 English state…

This article provides a five-year historical synopsis of how central government policies are impacting on careers work in England's secondary schools. It shows attempts to reshape and re-engineer careers provision for young people, through an evolving careers experiment. The extent to which such exogenous arrangements are facilitating and/or…

The success of schools' counselling services often depends on the support of various key stakeholder groups. This study reports on the attitudes of key stakeholders working within the Welsh Government school-based counselling strategy. Using a survey methodology, the opinions of local authority leads/service managers (n=25), school management…

This article explores how school-based counselling might impact young people's capacity to study and learn. Previous research has indicated that counselling in schools has an indirect positive impact on academic achievement. A mixed methods approach, using a semi-structured qualitative interview and a brief rating scale, was employed with 21 young…

This paper reports some early findings from a research project about the impact on career guidance in England of 14-19 reforms in recent years. We begin by highlighting a paradox in English national policy, since reforms in education and training have created a heightened demand for career guidance, whilst reforms in youth support services have…