Careers Services: History, Policy and Practice in The United Kingdom

From the pre-war ‘Juvenile Employment Service’ through to the multi-media options provided by today’s ‘Connexions’ services, David Peck analyses the origins and development of careers education over the past 100 years, charting over the decades its huge variety of successes and failures. Each new development in the UK’s careers service is related to wider changes in social, education and economic policy, with references made throughout to the major political figures over the century with a vested interest in career choice, from Winston Churchill to Tony Blair. Particular attention is paid to the recent growth of a professional ethos among careers advisors: their training, qualifications and practice. This wide-ranging and meticulously researched book will contribute to the increasingly urgent debate on the future of careers guidance, and for the first time calls the profession to critically examine their past in order to improve and inform the future of both their profession and their clients.