Comment 1: We don't know what kind of partnership to set up between career guidance and the curriculum. 

This confusion exists in both compulsory and post 16 education.  Is this true?  Does this matter?  

Comment 2: If careers education cannot currently find a space in the curriculum how would /will careers guidance fair?

The 1999 survey of Careers Education and Guidance in British schools by NACGT maintains that CEG is:

• a "contested concept",
• a "goodwill curriculum",
• under resourced and that
• school arrangements can help or hinder its delivery.

Given the new statuory requirement in England and the development of the National Framework for CEG and the QCA learning outcomes perhaps this position will change but it may be too early to speculate how this will effect careers guidance.

In Scotland the prospect is even less positive where we have no statutory requirement for the delevery of Careers Education. It is argued(SCAGES)that teaching is an activity of guidance and given the above it may be the careers aspect that brings the difficulty.  

Comment 3: The role of CEG in different educational settings

It does seem that CEG is being squeezed right out of the curriculum, at the same time that it is taking a more prominent role in the curriculum in HE. Is this driven by the emphasis now placed on 'employability' of graduates? Or funding? Both? Others?

Comment 4: The precarious position of CEG in compulsory education

Careers education in schools pretty-much clings to the edge of timetable - with a precarious finger-hold on the already-overloaded ‘pshe’. 

So why do I think it possible that curriculum will yet prove to be one of the most significant features in the future of careers work? Because learning to manage life roles is as complex and demanding as any aspect of contemporary curriculum. And if we are really going to do something worthwhile with Connexions and similar programmes, we will need strong curriculum ideas.

When ‘careers education’ was first introduced, it seemed a more cost-effective way to do some of the work. Part of that thinking was that careers-ed was an adjunct to guidance - backing it with coverage of preparatory ground.

Traces of that thinking are still around. But I doubt that it’s sustainable. In the first place working life - its pressures, opportunities and what people can do about it - has changed. There is a much bigger challenge here than anything envisaged when careers education was first introduced.

Furthermore, we have learned how curriculum has its own special dynamic. A wide repertoire of learning processes has been developed. Part of it is based on an understanding of progression - how people move from a starting point to where they can turn learning into sustainable action. Some of this has been built into careers education.

But we can go much further. There are two critical issues for careers work: learning-to-learn and transfer-of-learning. We don’t know as much as we need to know about how to enable the former; and we have made little progress in achieving the conditions for the latter. Yet, in our field, the only significant payoff is not in how well people do in their assessments, it is in how relevant and usable the learning proves to be in their lives.

There is an important research agenda here. And none of its questions are exclusive to careers - many are critical to ‘mainstream’ curriculum. It is part of a growing world-wide questioning of curriculum - and of the terms in which we need it to work.

Policy is long on rhetoric, but short on such understanding. Standards and relevance are not the same thing! We won’t be able to deliver anything worth having– however-well people do in assessment – unless they also use and adapt their learning in their lives. Career curriculum could be a trailblazer on that issue.