About Gatsby
Careers guidance at Gatsby
As part of their journey through education, all young people should have equity of information, opportunity and experiences to help them make ambitious and fulfilling choices for their futures. Gatsby has been working on careers guidance in England since the publication of our Good Career Guidance report in 2014. We used extensive research and international evidence to define a framework for world-class careers guidance in education – the Gatsby Benchmarks.
Piloting the benchmarks
The benchmarks have been central to government statutory guidance for schools and guidance for colleges since 2018, following a successful pilot in the North East of England from 2015-17. Since then, over 4,700 schools and colleges have adopted the benchmarks to review and improve their careers guidance. Broad, structured and embedded careers guidance programmes have been developing, and performance against the benchmarks has been steadily improving, ever since. This has been supported by government-funded infrastructure modelled on what our pilot had told us was crucial for successful implementation of the benchmarks.
Our work supporting the benchmarks
The education, careers and business sectors have worked incredibly hard since 2018 – however, the work is not yet complete. Gatsby continues to fund research and innovative projects; investigate good practice; and promote the importance of good careers guidance. Following two years of extensive review, we published updates to the Gatsby Benchmarks for 2024 and beyond, which you can read about here.
We work in close partnership with the Department for Education and government-funded support and infrastructure for careers in education, including The Careers & Enterprise Company and their resources and support for schools and colleges.
For more information on our ongoing careers guidance work, see our Latest Updates page and Good Career Guidance on the Gatsby Foundation website.
More from Gatsby
Gatsby is a foundation set up by David Sainsbury to realise his charitable objectives. We focus our support on a limited number of areas:
Plant science research
Neuroscience research
Education
Economic development in Africa
Public policy research and advice
The arts
Gatsby’s education team focuses on technical education reform; STEM skills in the workforce; good career guidance; and science and maths in schools.