Careers Education: what’s new for 2025-26?

North East Ambition is an integral part of the mayoral and cabinet commitment to making the North East The Home of Real Opportunity. 

The past 18 months has seen considerable change for the North East with the election of our very first mayor and the formation of the North East Combined Authority.

The mayor’s ambitions for the region are encapsulated in the five missions published in the Local Growth Plan (LGP). From this 10-year plan we are already seeing a raft of measures to improve transport, employment and skills in the region, as well as a headline goal to eradicate child poverty.

Specifically, the North East Combined Authority released it’s New Deal for North East Workers, which  is a 5 year strategy to help more people get good jobs.

The plan focuses on:

• improving skills and qualification
• reducing unemployment and inactivity
• supporting economic growth
• expanding opportunity across the region

More recently, the North East Combined Authority has also launched an Economic Inactivity Trailblazer,  a £10m pilot to tackle health related economic inactivity in the North East by bringing together health, employment, and skills services and Connect to Work, a £50m programme running until 2030 which will help residents from priority groups with health conditions or complex barriers into employment.

How do these developments affect careers guidance for our young people?

One of the mayor’s five missions is to make the North East the ‘home of real opportunity’. For young people in our schools, colleges and other settings this means providing them with the information, guidance and confidence they need to make informed decisions about their future.

The North East Combined Authority has identified six key sectors of the regional economy which will continue to grow and flourish over the next 10 years. These are:

• Offshore wind
• Advanced manufacturing
• Creative industries
• Defence, security and space
• Life sciences
• Digital

Supporting the growth sectors is the foundational economy, which provides services and goods that essential to everyday life. This includes: food, retail, energy, transport, construction, agriculture, care and education.

It is the backbone of our economy, providing vital services and the supply chain to delivering wider growth in the region. It provides the building blocks which enable other businesses to thrive, and it is fundamental to supporting the delivery of wider growth.

However, despite this opportunity, employers tell us that many of their vacancies in these sectors go unfilled because young people are unaware of them or do not have the right skills to access them.

Why is a high-quality careers guidance in our schools and colleges so important?

After a lengthy and wide-ranging consultation in 2023 it became clear that the Gatsby Benchmarks were highly respected by education, business and stakeholders alike although some significant revisions were thought prudent to reflect the changing social and economic landscape. The revised Benchmarks were published in November 2024 and were confirmed as the bedrock of all high-quality careers programmes in the DfE’s new statutory guidance for careers in May 2025.

The new guidance stresses the vital need for effective and inspirational careers guidance for all young people in order to make sense of the world of work outside their place of study; to help them develop the career readiness that employers are looking for; to give them the confidence and resilience to make a successful transition from education into employment and to know where to go for help on their journey should they need it.

All 44 careers hubs in England are now working hard to embed the revised Gatsby Benchmarks into their institutions using sophisticated digital tools. They are also working hard to ensure quality and consistency, measure impact and success, and ensure that all decisions are based on evidence. Careers guidance should be part of whole-school and college improvement and, as such, requires strategic leadership from school/college SLT as well as governors/trustees.

How does North East Ambition support schools and colleges?

Careers Leaders in all seven of our Local Authorities have access to the following:

1. a) 1:1 support from the North East Ambition team to support them to deliver, and continually improve, a high-quality careers programme
2. b) Access to regular conferences, workshops, bulletins and training
3. c) Signposting to key partners, resources and opportunities
4. d) The opportunity to engage with local and regional employers including by being matched to an Enterprise Adviser

 

All schools and colleges in the region have a named contact from the Education, Skills and Careers Team at the North East Combined Authority who will work with their institutions to ensure continuous improvement in their careers offer; advice on ways to deliver meaningful experiences of the workplace, in line with the government’s new work experience guarantee, and to ensure that all their learners understand the labour market and all their options at key points of transition.

For any further information contact Matt Joyce, Regional Lead: North East Ambition

 

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