New resources launched to support delivery of the Gatsby Benchmarks during COVID-19

Last week (24th September 2020) the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) and Gatsby launched Careers in Context: A Can-Do Guide, with advice on how schools and colleges can continue to meet the Gatsby Benchmarks despite COVID-19 restrictions.

The guide considers each of the eight Gatsby Benchmarks in turn, with guidance for delivery and examples of innovative practice sourced from school and college leaders and Careers Leaders. In some cases, the pandemic has presented new ways of working which can be adopted to provide more flexibility long-term, such as virtual employer encounters. In other cases, the way a Benchmark is delivered has not changed fundamentally, but COVID-19 has presented new challenges and considerations to be taken into account.

The contributions to this resource reveal the remarkable adaptability Careers Leaders have shown in recent months – often continuing to deliver careers activities even while the majority of learners were at home, and continuing to innovate in the face of significant disruption at the start of a new academic year. This guide also makes clear that the Gatsby Benchmarks continue to be a world-class standard for career guidance, and that schools and colleges should continue to work towards them.

The Careers in Context guide is included as part of the CEC’s new Resource Directory – a fully searchable collection of approved resources to support practitioners through every aspect of their career guidance programmes. Gatsby hopes these new resources will provide much-needed support to the careers community in schools and colleges at a time of such severe disruption to education and the labour market.