This blog is designed to keep you up-to-date with Careers Education, Information and Guidance (CEIAG) available locally, nationally and through the school. I’ll be posting information about employment and training opportunities available locally as well as details of open days and useful websites. The world of education, employment and training opportunities is changing rapidly so keep checking in for the latest information.

Mr Cross


Friday 1 November 2019

What Parents want ... What Children want ...

Recent research shows that parents' views on what an ideal job might be differs from their children's ideas. Funny that ...



Are we getting the jobs of our dreams?

A recent infographic published in the i newspaper reported that less than a third of the UK's workforce thinks that they're in the "right" job ...


Thursday 19 September 2019

Students are over-paying their loans

£28.5m in student loan over-payments has been unclaimed by graduates. In a nine-year period, around 500,000 former students overpaid on their student loans, paying on average nearly £600 more than they owed. Over-payments are made due to the way information is shared about loan repayments. Traditionally, the Student Loan Company has received repayment information once a year, at the end of the tax year in April. This means that if a graduate repaid their loans during the tax year, for example in November, they will have been making over-payments for the rest of that tax year.

Wednesday 18 September 2019

And the most desirable employer is ...

Universum Global has published its annual Global Talent Survey which found that Google is the UK’s most desirable company to work for by graduates for the 7th consecutive year. Universum studied 39,500 students from 97 UK universities. Google has widened its applicant pool from STEM graduates with Humanities and Law students both ranking it in their top two and four companies to work for respectively.

An end to Predicted Grades?

Labour has said that it would scrap university places being offered on the basis of predicted grades and bring in a system of applying after results, calling the current system "deeply unfair". Research by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills in 2011 found that 51.7% of predictions were accurate, with 41.7% being over-predicted and 6.6% under-predicted. Black applicants had the lowest percentage accuracy with only 39.1% of grades accurately predicted, while white applicants had the highest-grade prediction accuracy at 53%.

Grade inflation at universities

The Office for Students (OfS) has said that the proportion of students awarded first-class degrees continues to increase, rising by 80% since 2010-11 It has warned that for almost three-quarters of universities, such increases in top grades are "unexplained". Susan Lapworth, director of competition for the OfS, said, "Worries about grade inflation threaten to devalue a university education in the eyes of employers and potential students." Over 40,000 more students graduated with "firsts" last summer than seven years before.
The study also looked at those awarded either first or 2:1s. At Bristol University 92% of students are awarded either a first or 2:1 and at Cambridge 94%. There have also been big increases in the proportion of students awarded these two top grades despite beginning university with relatively low A-level grades. Among those going to university with grades below DDD at A-level, seven years ago 40% were awarded the top two grades, this has risen to above 70%.

Record numbers apply to university

Record numbers of English 18 year olds have applied to university. UCAS figures show that 236,350 school leavers, 40% in total, had applied by the end of June, 3,970 more than in 2018. However, the number of 18 year olds in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland applying for degrees has fallen. Across the UK as a whole, 275,520 young people applied to university this year, up from 272,910 in 2018, but down from 278,130 in 2017. There were record numbers of black, Asian and mixed-race applicants, while the number of white applicants continues to fall. Surprisingly, the number of applicants, across all age groups, from the EU rose by 540 from 50,120 in 2018 to 50,660 this year. There was also a rise in applicants from outside the EU applying to UK universities to 81,340, an increase of 8%.

Parents pay the price of university

A survey by the consumer group Which? of over 800 parents of current and prospective students found that 2:3 will use their monthly income to cover the costs and over a quarter will dip into their savings. Over a quarter have had to, or are planning to, cut back on spending on home improvements, cars and holidays to support their child at university, while 6% said that they have or will have to take on a second job to cover the costs of their child’s higher education. Overall, 84% of parents of current students said they were financially supporting their child at university and nearly half of those said the overall cost was more than they expected, contributions averaged £360 a month.

More details of 'T levels' released

UCAS has announced how T levels are to be graded. T-levels contain a mixture of classroom learning and ‘on-the-job’ experience, including a placement in the workplace of at least 315 hours. Candidates will be awarded one of four overall grades, ranging from Distinction* to a Pass. They will also get a nationally recognised certificate which will show their overall grade and a breakdown of what they have achieved across the T-level programme.


Thursday 23 May 2019

All change at Informed Choices

The Russell Group of universities has decided to change its very widely used Informed Choices guidance from a booklet published annually to a website.  The aim of this is to broaden the advice they provide for application to their universities and to prevent potential applicants from narrowing their curriculum choices. You can visit the new site here.

Monday 13 May 2019

Over-educated employees

The Office of National Statistics has said that 31% of graduates are over educated for the job they are doing. For those graduating before 1992, the number was 22%, but this jumps to 34% for those graduating after 2007. London had the highest proportion of over educated workers, with about 25% overqualified for their job. Graduates in the Arts and Humanities were more likely to be under-using their education.

Tuesday 2 April 2019

Best cities to work in post-Degree

Prospects, the UK agency responsible for graduate employability, has analysed the relationship between graduate salaries and the cost of living in 23 UK cities. Derby is top, due to having many well-paid jobs in engineering and a relatively low cost of living. Southampton and Coventry make the top three, due to their combination of a relatively strong graduate jobs market and affordable living. Leicester and Liverpool are high, although starting salaries are low, they are relatively cheap places to live. Brighton, London and Oxford offer some of the highest starting salaries, yet new graduates will have low disposable incomes due to high living expenses such as rents. 

Charlie Ball, head of higher education intelligence at Prospects, said, “Graduates may need to think carefully about chasing the highest possible salary if it means moving to somewhere with a high cost of living, particularly rents. A graduate may need an extremely attractive offer in London, far above the average salary, for it to be worth them leaving a less expensive labour market ... Graduates need to understand where value lies for their degree and whether it is worth remaining in a well-known jobs market on a lower salary or moving for more money where costs are higher. It’s a common assumption that the latter choice is always better, but the data strongly suggests that it is not.”

The value of a Masters Degree

A survey from the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) found that only 19% of employers said graduates with a Master’s had better skills than those with a Batchelors. No employers in the consumer goods sector valued the qualification, while only 6% in the IT sector saw the benefits . Only 12% of employers said that postgraduate qualified hires progress more quickly in terms of salary than other hires. Stephen Isherwood, chief executive of the ISE, said: “In reality, most employers simply don’t discriminate between those with a Master’s and those with a Degree. They see them as the same. They are treated the same when they join. They do not go on a faster track or get paid a premium. I think that is a bit of a shock to some Master’s students going into the labour market.”

Monday 18 March 2019

Apprenticeship opportunities at Ferrari and Amazon

Ferrari has announced that all twelve of the UK’s official Ferrari Dealers will be holding an “Open Day” at their aftersales facilities to showcase Apprenticeships opportunities. Each Dealer will be inviting students from selected local schools to visit the workshop and learn about Ferrari technology and potential job opportunities. Candidates will need at least 5 GCSEs. The following roles are available: 
Service Technician – 3 year Apprenticeship
Service Adviser – 2 year Apprenticeship
Parts Adviser – 2 year Apprenticeship.
Amazon has announced plans to create over 1,000 Apprenticeships over the next two years. Nine different programmes, lasting between 13 months and four years will be on offer, ranging from IT, safety and HR through to software engineering, robotics, leadership and technology. Over 90 new Amazon Bachelors and Masters degree-level Apprentices will also be available, focused on software development engineering, senior leadership and automation.

Tuesday 26 February 2019

Post graduate salaries

You can use two websites (linked on the left hand side of this page) to find out potential post-graduate salaries for specific courses at particular institutions:

WHICH? University
  • Use the Find a Course function – search by course and university
  • Click on course information for one of the courses that comes up
  • Click on – 'After graduation'
  • First you can see the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education salary data, 6 months after graduation.
  • Then scroll down to see mean salaries 1,3 and 5 years after graduation which comes from the Longitudinal Education Outcomes data-set. Only the mean is included, lower and upper quartiles aren’t.
Unistats:
  • Search for course by subject and university
  • Click on the relevant course that you are interested in
  • Click on 'Employment and accreditation'.

Monday 21 January 2019

You are what you see ...

Research undertaken by Reed.co.uk amongst 18-34yr olds found that 1 in 4 admitted that TV has influenced their career choices. The Apprentice was the top TV programme to influence careers, followed by Dragons’ Den, and then CSI and Law & Order. Love Island was seen as helping to inspire careers in fitness and sales thanks to an onscreen gym ...

Analysis of the benefits of a Degree

Analysis of data from 2015-16 has revealed some startling facts about the cost-benefits of going to university:
  • 18-25% of undergraduates were studying for degrees which fail to deliver a lifetime-earnings premium that justifies the average student debt, from tuition fees and maintenance loans, of £50,000.
  • 40% of undergraduates were enrolled in courses that led to median earnings below the student-loan repayment threshold of £25,000, after five years.
  • 10% were enrolled in courses with median earnings below £25,000 ten years after graduation - representing 134,000 students every year who won't be paying back anything ten years after graduating yet who will have accumulated significant interest.
  • 20% would be no better off five years after graduating than if they had chosen to take a non-university route, such as an Apprenticeship.
It could be argued that higher education and the "university experience" are a reward in themselves, beyond income, but ...

FBI tactics to address essay cheating

Now software is being developed using ‘forensic linguistics’, which analyses the composition of a document including vocabulary, punctuation and format. It is a technique used by the FBI to create profiles of criminal suspects. At the moment it is not illegal to set up a company writing essays, dissertations or other assignments for students. The companies simply post a disclaimer telling students their products are intended for reference or a guide. Their marketing tactics, emailing and messaging students directly, indicate just how lucrative the business is. As well as widespread use of sponsorship of young "vloggers" and other social influencers, some are also going on to city centre campuses with leaflets that imply they are from student support services. [source:GTAssociates]

Sunday 13 January 2019

Graduate earnings

With more and more concerns being reported in the media that some graduate career pathways may not result in incomes which repay the costs of the degree course, the i newspaper has recently published a table of earnings by degrees: