Careers Information, Advice and Guidance (CIAG)

Strategic Overview

"Kaplan helps individuals achieve their educational and career goals. We build futures one success story at a time. We are here to make a difference to every learner and inspire them to succeed."

Kaplan is committed to providing an easily accessible, impartial and stable Careers, Information, Advice and Guidance (CIAG) programme. We pride ourselves on both encouraging individuals to be ambitious and supporting them to achieve their education and career goals.

We are guided at all times by our values of integrity, support, opportunity, knowledge and results.

Integral to our mission is treating every learner as a unique individual and it is this same approach we take with our Careers Information, Advice and Guidance (CIAG) provision.

We draw upon guidance from the Government’s evolving agenda in skills development and all-age careers support; as well as taking inspiration from best practice models of quality-assurance and the Gatsby Benchmark principles in England.

We work with employers, partnership organisations and charitable groups to raise the ambitions and opportunities for all individuals that study with us.

Kaplan recognises the importance of external quality assurance and we hold ourselves accountable against the Matrix Standard - a Department for Education owned international quality standard for information, advice and/or guidance (IAG). Kaplan routinely seeks external review of its services and as a consequence has achieved the matrix quality standard for Information, Advice and Guidance** successfully passing the re-accreditation inspection in November 2022.

As an apprentice, you will have career education, information, advice and guidance throughout your journey. This may come from our:

• recruitment team if you are applying for an apprenticeship vacancy through Kaplan
• talent coaches, who will talk with you in your training plan call and progress reviews about career goals and your overall development. This is tailored to your individual circumstances.
• tutors, who may share with you how your learning applies to real life work scenarios and give examples from their careers
• Enrichment Week careers insight talks, when you’ll hear from current practitioners about the range of roles in the sectors
• Career Progression microsite, where you’ll learn about further study options and labour market information
• Careers education in our Virtual Learning Environment, where you’ll explore a career success equation
• Podcasts and articles on career related topics
• The Association of Apprentices, the networking and membership body you can join free of charge through your apprenticeship.

As a learning provider, our career objectives are to:

• Provide an easily accessible and stable careers programme for all our learners, ensuring this meets their needs at every touch-point with us.
• Utilise labour-market information, to provide our learners with the relevant knowledge, skills, and behaviours training to ensure they stay inspired and competitive.
• Ensure a tailored approach, addressing the career needs of individual learners
• Link the curriculum learning to career progression through skills and personal development, occupational expert teaching, employer engagement and End-Point Assessment preparation.
• Listen and engage with the needs of our employers, designing training programmes that are relevant to industry and meet business strategies and goals.
• Understand, learn from, and share different viewpoints and experiences of workplaces by listening to our learners, particularly the Kaplan Apprenticeship Advisory Panel.
• Promote Careers Information, Advice and Guidance for the benefit of all.

*https://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/focus-areas/good-career-guidance
**https://matrixstandard.com/standard