Special school staff perspectives on how careers guidance is provided to their autistic young people

Careers guidance has long been positioned as a tool to improve young people’s transition from education to employment. In addition, schools and colleges in England have a statutory requirement to provide careers guidance to their students. Yet limited research has investigated how careers guidance is provided in special schools for autistic pupils. We investigated this topic by eliciting the views and experiences of special school staff responsible for careers guidance in their setting. We used a participatory, mixed-method approach, which included an online survey and semi-structured interviews. Staff responsible for careers guidance from 103 special schools from across England completed the online survey, in which they self-reported on the careers guidance activities taking place within their schools. Twenty of these participants then took part in detailed semi-structured interviews about their experience of providing careers guidance to their autistic young people. Our online survey results showed that special schools are using a broad range of careers guidance activities with their autistic students, including embedding learning about careers within the curriculum, work experience and 1:1 careers advice. The results also highlight that special school staff value the Gatsby Benchmarks as a framework for providing careers guidance. Our interview results built on those of the survey to demonstrate that while special school staff take a hugely personalised approach to providing careers guidance to their autistic young people, they also report barriers in relation to some key aspects. Most notably, they highlighted how external factors often limited how accessible work experience was for their autistic young people. We discuss the implications of these findings for both policy and practice, including providing suggestions for how improvements could be made in the future.