Careers guidance: statutory requirements (secondary)

Understand what you and your senior leaders need to do to provide compulsory careers guidance, while meeting Ofsted's 'personal development' requirements.

Last reviewed on 7 February 2024See updates
School types: AllSchool phases: Secondary, 16 PlusRef: 3915
Contents
  1. Who this applies to
  2. Your school's/trust's duties 
  3. Your duties as a governing/trust board
  4. Monitor your school's/trust's careers guidance
  5. The Gatsby Benchmarks: summarised
  6. Work experience
  7. Ofsted's expectations

Our associate education expert, Lorraine Petersen, helped us to write this article. Also see page 82 of the Governance Handbook.

Who this applies to

The Department for Education (DfE)'s statutory careers guidance applies to:

  • All maintained schools, including maintained special schools and pupil referral units (PRUs)
  • Academies and free schools (including alternative provision (AP) academies and free schools) 

The requirements don't apply to non-maintained special schools and independent schools.

If you're in a multi-academy trust, the guidance applies to each academy. Some trusts align their careers plan and education across each school. 

Your school's/trust's duties 

Your school/trust should have a strategic careers plan

This should be developed in line with the Gatsby Benchmarks (see below) and the DfE’s guidance. 

It should show how your careers programme will be:

  • Implemented
  • Measured – including how your school/trust will assess the impact on pupils

Previously this was only required for pupils