It’s time to engage our communities to play a more active role in schools and to provide support to our young people.

Community-based support systems in every state school in the country should be a manifesto pledge in order to improve the provision of career information, advice and guidance (IAG) across the UK.

Such a pledge would sit well within the recommendations of today’s Department for Children, Schools and Families white paper on Information Advice and Guidance. The paper suggests that approachable and aspirational mentoring networks built around comprehensive schools can have a real impact on students’ chances in life.

The white paper comes in the wake of the Alan Milburn report into social mobility that was so critical of current IAG provision. An increase in social mobility has remained elusive to the Labour government despite it remaining a true priority of the party. Here a crucial piece of the social mobility puzzle has been identified and not only that, but real solutions have been developed and are ready to be rolled out.  

Future First, launched in 2008 to build and engage alumni associations in state schools, is showcased in the white paper as a means through which to bring the school back into the community and to leverage the natural resources of local communities to add value in schools.

In 2005 a government green paper committed local authorities to providing IAG ‘delivered in the way they [young people] want to receive it’. Future First did just this and the programme was launched in the wake of focus groups and surveys in state schools. The results of these surveys were clear: students wanted to hear from people who were actually in jobs (as opposed to professional career advisors), through an interactive website and ‘from people like me’.

This last point is perhaps the most important one – students want people to whom they can relate to give them advice they will feel to be realistic and practical.

Future First’s model involves working with schools to build an alumni network of former students. The programme is based around celebrating success. Yes, ‘top achievers’ – doctors, lawyers, footballers, etc. – are profiled, but so are plumbers and fireman, actors, sports coaches and caterers. The alumni are engaged with current students through a four year curriculum of in-school events as well as an interactive website that profiles them and allows for online Q&A.

Such a network can go far further than just building a careers advice service round schools. Once former students and community members have a real platform through which to engage with the school, it can be harnessed to create work-shadowing and internship placements, industry days and even raise funds for school projects.

This process, of course, is nothing new. Private schools and universities have been doing it for generations. It’s just that no one took the time in the state sector before. The problem has been exposed and answers have been tested (Future First works in partnership the Sutton Trust to evaluate and maximise social impact). Here is an opportunity for the Labour government to build a manifesto pledge that sits at the heart of its values: community, equality, social mobility.

The tendency in schools dominated by worries over league tables is to focus only on those activities which contribute to the grades that define such placements. The government must show leadership to support schools in providing wider services that are crucial to the future of our students.