Jackie Hartley’s BLOG

Surely everyone knows this? Maybe not. My stepson Graeme has just spotted this on one the blogs he follows and forwarded it to me.

So far we’ve received about 80 applications to our call to hire a new web designer at 37signals. Thanks to everyone who’s applied. We’re beginning to get in touch with people we think may be a good fit.

Unfortunately it’s not all coming up roses. It’s surprising how many people don’t proofread, spell check, or otherwise pay attention to the basics when applying for a job.

What is amazing is that so far there have been 70 comments on this post with people arguing over whether this sort of stuff matters. Geez, some people just don’t get it, do they? Still that kind of thinking helps to narrow the field when applying for jobs, at least for those people who do get it!

At last it appears that someone up there in the ivory towers has realised that adults need careers guidance too. Well that is not strictly fair. We have got a system of providing adult guidance but it is fragmented, targeted and for many potential adult clients, hard to find. Apparently MORI did a survey to check if adults knew what IAG stood for - they didn’t. When they were told it stood Information, Advice and Guidance they responded ‘on what?’. Nice one. Plus the current provision is geared almost at the adult NEETs, well not exactly but at adults who haven’t got many qualifications. Anyway to cut a long story short, it has been decided that in view of the skills shortage in this country…

DIUS and DWP will work together to create a joined-up employment and skills system. We will merge the information and advice services of learndirect and nextstep providers into a new universal adult careers service in England, working in partnership with Jobcentre Plus.The new careers service will ensure that everyone is able to access the help they need to take stock of where they are in achieving their goals and ambitions, and to get the support they need to advance themselves and achieve their full potential.

The full World Class Skills report can be viewed here.
Again, a little bird tells me that the new Adult Advancement and Careers Service will have one phone number, one website and be one service - yippee! Now let’s all begin to imagine what things might look like if that then morphed into one all age careers guidance service for England … aahh, the stuff of dreams.

Been doing quite a bit of training recently around the area of ‘What is careers education and guidance?’ I love doing this training - especially when the audience are people relatively new to the careers work area. It feels like I get a real opportunity to share with them some real insight into what CEG work is. I hate to say it but I think there are a lot of people out there, doing careers work, who don’t really understand what it is. This training opens their eyes and when that happens it is almost like you see the penny drop or the lights come on. I get a huge buzz from it. Which makes me realise that I am still passionate about this area of work - just jaded with the policy mess that washes all around it. Hopefully, when things settle down again we can get back to what we love, which is doing really good careers work.

With all the recent changes affecting careers work (relegation of careers work to conference fixtures in the Economic Well Being Non-League championships) and the dessimation of the Connexions rebels by the Dark Lords of the Empire I have been harbouring delusions about dropping out. Well, not so much dropping out as doing a bit of Tom and Barbara in the garden. So, a couple of weeks ago we spent a long weekend erecting a large fruit cage to keep the pesky birds off our raspberries, strawberries, loganberries and gooseberries. We are now researching polytunnels and hope to have one sorted in the very near future to make our vegetable garden a more year round affair and we have planted 2 apple and 1 plum tree. We are booked onto a chicken handling course in a couple of weeks time to see if we feel confident enough to branch out into livestock, though talk of ‘crusty vents’ at a recent dinner party for highly amused friends has left me feeling a little less sure about poultry as a part of this dream. Clearly the hen thing is more to do with romance than practicality. I suspect it will be much cheaper to buy organic, free range, ‘I was laid in a hedgerow by a free roaming and joyously happy hen’ eggs than to produce our own but hey, the grandchildren will love it. So, where will it all end? Who knows but in the meantime we are enjoying ourselves playing at the good life whilst working in the real world is proving so taxing on the spirit.

So, at last, we have some national IAG standards that are easy to follow, relevant and doable. Not surprising when you know who wrote them. Why the Government didn’t just tackle the whole thing this way right from the off I do not know. I wonder if Mouchel Parkman got paid for not delivering? With the budget looming and yet more tax changes and fears about public spending, why can’t this Government (and previous ones) just spend our money more wisely? There is so much waste and unnecessary expenditure at a time when nearly every public service could do with more funds, it’s criminal really. Anyway enough of my moaning on that score. About these standards - one thing I have come across on my travels, are schools and areas using them to audit CEG provision in schools, etc. Interesting. I was beginning to wonder where that left the CEG National Framework so decided to seek clarification from the horse’s mouth so to speak. Have no fears, David Andrews has written a short paper explaining how they work together. It is going to appear firstly in the ACEG Bulletin (so if you are a member of ACEG you should be able to get hold of that or view it on the member’s area of their website) and then I am sure it will subsequently appear on CEGNET (where, if you do not have them, you can also download the IAG standards).

Incidentally, I have heard a rumour that the CEG National Framework and the Work Related Learning Framework might be merged, which would make sense - even though CEG is statutory in Keystage 3 and 4 and WRL only in Keystage 4. Personally, I think the sooner they scrap all the frameworks, policies, league tables and other Whitehall detritus that clutters up the curriculum runway and instead judge schools on their ability to launch young people into successful lives/careers, the better. I can feel a manifesto coming on …

Finding it really hard to concentrate on writing. I have realised that I really hate short days and dark nights. At this time of year all I want to do is hibernate. I hate waking up in the dark (so frequently don’t!) and as soon as the light starts to fade around 4 pm my brain just says ‘Oh day over, time to stop work’. Fortunately, the shortest day this year is on December 22 I think so only just over another week before we start heading towards the light again - hurray! Maybe then I will be able to get back to writing, well, once Christmas and New Year festivities are over.

Am back to writing the U3 series and busy producing teaching materials around the topic of healthy eating. The more I read, think, attempt to write, the more I realise how easy it is to tell someone else they need to eat more healthily and how hard it is to actually do it! Then I get to wondering, how does an overweight or unhealthy tutor feel trying to deliver this stuff? Most of the materials out there seem to focus on food groupings and 5 lots of fruit and veg and drink more water. I think most kids are fully aware of which foods are good for them and which are bad, as are most adults, but that doesn’t stop us tucking into them. I hate telling kids to do things I cannot do myself. I always try to find activities that don’t patronise kids or leave them feeling completely uninterested or untouched by what they are doing. So, sitting here, overweight and drinking too much caffeine and not doing enough exercise myself I am having a real struggle to write something that feels real to me never mind the kids. Then people wonder why our packs take so long to write! But I am getting there - the Now and Later glasses work quite well and also the Use your HEAD strategy looks really promising so should get this cracked today.

Getting back into writing I started researching where things were up to with the Personal Development Curriculum so headed off to the QCA website. What did I find? Well if you google PDC you get sent to the old QCA website 14 - 19 bit, with all the old stuff on PDC. I knew though that this stuff was now a bit dated so I started to dig deeper and lo and behold, found a whole new QCA site with a new page on PDC. How annoying is this? This stuff is hard enough to get your head round without the main bodies driving it giving out confusing and multiple messages. So, what to do? Go with the new stuff is my advice. I have pointed out this mess to a representative from QCA who agreed it was daft. Then they wonder why people don’t get on with it!

There is an old saying ‘What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts’. So in these difficult times for careers publishers, we’ve definately found our swings so now we just need to find the roundabouts!

Things are not great in the careers publishing field at the moment, what with Connexions being disbanded and going back into Local Authorities or not as the case may be, and schools struggling to cope with the 14 - 19 developments, Diploma Gateways and the Personal Development Curriculum and well, everyone with their minds on things other than careers resources. So, the pressure is off and so I am beginning to focus more of my energies on Personal Branding for Graduates. I have set up a new website and have added a blog to that, so until things pick up in this area I will be focussing on blogging on my new blog for a bit. So if you want to find out what I am up to please visit my other blog. Will get back to this one when things pick up a bit. Bye for now! Jackie