A Policy Love Letter to Ministers and Officials: Bold Ambition, But Please Join the Dots

Dear Ministers and Officials at DWP, DfE, MHCLG and DSIT,

First, let me say – and I mean this sincerely – thank you.

Yesterday’s announcement from Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden is genuinely welcome news. A £1 billion investment to create 200,000 jobs and apprenticeships for young people, a £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant for employers hiring 18–24 year olds who have been searching for work for six months or more, a £2,000 incentive for SMEs taking on new apprentices, and the expansion of the Jobs Guarantee from 18–21 to 18–24 year olds –  these are meaningful, tangible commitments.

At a time when nearly one million young people are not earning or learning, a rise of 248,000 between 2021 and 2024, the urgency is right and the direction of travel is correct.

So please read what follows in that spirit. This is not an attack. It is a love letter. And like all good love letters, it contains a few hard truths.

The gap between ambition and delivery is widening – and practitioners are feeling it

The pledges made yesterday sit alongside other substantial commitments already on the table –  guaranteeing two weeks of work experience for every young person, training a thousand new careers advisers (to be officially confirmed), raising the bar on Gatsby Benchmarks, rolling out Industry Placements in new sectors. These are the right commitments. But out in the system –  in colleges, schools, careers hubs, jobcentres and local community groups –  practitioners and managers are saying something different. They are operating in a highly fragmented landscape where high-level promises are not always matched by the operational infrastructure needed to deliver them.

Schools are being asked to meet revised, more rigorous Gatsby Benchmarks at the very moment that sector capacity is under greatest strain

Staff turnover, particularly in schools and Jobcentres, remains stubbornly high, making cost-effective continuous professional development almost impossible to sustain. Schools are being asked to meet revised, more rigorous Gatsby Benchmarks at the very moment that sector capacity is under greatest strain – and the honest truth is that some of the energy in the system is going not into helping schools achieve those benchmarks, but into managing the communications around a likely drop in Gatsby Benchmark scores. That is not improvement. That is damage control.

Education Record App

Meanwhile, the Education Record App – designed to let Year 11 students digitally access and store their results – is being rolled out via a mechanism that depends on smartphone use in environments where smartphones are routinely banned. The administrative burden of teacher verification is real and unfunded. These are not trivial implementation details. They are the fault lines through which good policy quietly collapses.

The tiered model for careers: Gatekeeping disguised as efficiency

Perhaps the most structurally concerning development is the transition of the National Careers Service into the new Jobs and Careers Service by October 2026. The proposed three-tier model – digital first, then upskilled work coaches, then qualified careers advisers – has a surface logic to it. The new DfE and DWP Careers Policy and Delivery Forum recently reviewed progress. But look more carefully. The people who most need personalised, expert careers guidance, those facing complex barriers, those with SEND, those furthest from the labour market, will have to navigate two layers of non-specialist support before reaching a professionally qualified adviser. That is not widening access. That is gatekeeping, dressed up in the language of efficiency.

At a time when the government is simultaneously investing £1 billion in youth employment, it would be a cruel irony if those young people – and the adults who most need support – found themselves trapped behind a digital wall and a queue of overloaded work coaches, with only a smattering of careers advisers available at the end of it. The skills gaps in supporting vulnerable populations are already acknowledged in the system’s own documentation. The answer cannot be to put more barriers between those people and the expertise they need.

A plea for joined-up thinking – and an open table

What is missing from yesterday’s announcement, welcome as it is, is a coherent, cross-departmental careers action plan that treats the system as a whole rather than a collection of parallel initiatives. DWP is announcing employer incentives. DfE is reforming qualifications and benchmarks. MHCLG is driving place-based missions through e.g. Mission North East and Mission Coastal. DSIT is shaping the AI and digital skills agenda. These are not separate conversations. They are different parts of the same young person’s journey – and right now, those parts are not speaking to each other.

What is missing: a coherent, cross-departmental careers action plan that treats the system as a whole

I am not asking for another strategy document. I am asking politely for a table. A genuine, cross-departmental conversation that brings together employers, schools, colleges, careers professionals, local authorities, and yes – AI and careers technology innovators – to co-design the delivery infrastructure that will make these commitments real. The technologies exist. The expertise exists. The evidence base exists. What is needed is the political will to stop operating in silos and start treating careers support as the connective tissue and vital infrastructure it genuinely is – running through education, employment, health, place and digital policy alike.

The young people this announcement is designed to help are not waiting for the next strategy review. They are in classrooms, unemployed and feeling isolated, in Jobcentres and college corridors right now, asking for careers support that the system is not yet reliably able to give them.

You have made the bold promises. Now please –  join the dots.

Yours, with admiration and frustration in equal measure.

Dr Deirdre Hughes OBE, Co-Founding Director, CareerChat UK Ltd., Former Chair of the National Careers Council (England), and Associate Professor, University of Warwick IER