EfL and RoQA Awards

10/12/2015

The Employability for Life (EFL) Charter for pre-16 students and Charter Plus (for post-16 students) have been running now for a few years in Essex with 24 schools on board with the award and interest continues to grow from schools and colleges.

The purpose of EFL is to support young people in understanding and consolidating their employability ‘core’ skills using their everyday experiences both in and outside of education. The end result aims to enable young people to access employment, further or higher education.

Our first evaluation of the 2014 cohort of young people who undertook the award is really positive: In May 2015 nearly 3,000 young people achieved either Charter or Charter Plus. ECC monitored 741 Year 11 participants’ from the 2014 cohort and initial indications positively demonstrate that those young people who achieved the award are more likely to remain in employment, education or training for at least 7 months after leaving secondary school.

In September the EFL Steering Group, made up of representatives from the ESB Board, Education, and a local district council, was convened. It was agreed, following this year’s moderation process, that the award would be revised to support the latest CBI/Pearson – Inspiring Growth report.

Recognition of Quality Award

The Recognition of Quality Award (RoQA) is managed by Essex County Council’s Employability and Skills Unit and is a nationally validated, quality kite-mark that has been in operation since the late 1990s. It has been designed to assess the quality of Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG), Work Related Education (WRE), Education to Business links or Business to Education links. However, the most popular awards are CEIAG or WRE.

Education establishments choose the award they would like to progress, and once they have signed the agreement they are issued with the latest Principles and Criteria (P&C) which include:

Commitment
Management
Entitlement
Partnership
Impartiality (supports CEIAG)
Recognition

Our aim is to ensure the RoQA supports and enables 85% of Essex Secondary Schools to offer a high quality careers education programme by November 2016. Currently we have 56 schools who have achieved or are working towards RoQA. Thereby ensuring more young people are provided with the knowledge and skills to enable them to make a successful transition into Employment, Education or Training.

For more information please contact Tracy Eve on 03330130935.