The Chairman of the Consortium Board, Dr Barrie Hopson, today (23rd April 2020) announces a second Department for Education grant of £35,000 to support the Consortium’s core national work in leading, driving and promoting the Quality in Careers Standard:
“The DfE strongly recommends all schools to achieve the Quality in Careers Standard within its ‘Careers Strategy’, and because of this, we’re delighted that for a second financial year, the Department is offering us some financial support for our core costs. It means we can continue to properly fund our national corporate governance, executive direction and professional support services to our Awarding Bodies, as well as press on with our marketing and promotion of the Standard to our nation’s schools and colleges.
Last year (2019-20), DfE also funded us hosting three major events, free to attend, for schools and colleges not yet engaged with the Standard. These included the opportunity for face-to-face meetings with a number of our Awarding Bodies, and a chance to hear testimony from schools and colleges already holding the national Standard about the development journey towards accreditation and the benefits it brings for their students. The impact of these events is being reviewed this summer in terms of the number of schools and colleges embarking upon the Standard. We hope to convince the DfE to fund three further events in the early months of 2021. More news on that in due course, we hope.
For the moment though, I should like to offer our true thanks to the Department for its financial support and its endorsement of the Quality in Careers Standard.
I should also like to record our continuing thanks to the Career Development Institute (CDI) – to make receiving these DfE grants possible, we revised our Constitution, with the CDI readily accepting our invitation to become the ‘enabling host legal entity’ for the Consortium. Copies of our revised Constitution and the Memorandum of Understanding establishing the CDI as the ‘enabling host legal entity’ are held on the section of our website named “The Consortium” https://www.qualityincareers.org.uk/the-consortium/the-quality-in-careers-consortium-board/.”