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home Apprenticeships Learners Careers Information and Guidance

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 one of the UK’s largest vocational education providers, with an international learner base of approximately 1,000,000 and a UK apprentice base of 11,000. Highly respected within the financial sector, we are recognised for our high-quality teaching and learning with expert Tutors and Talent Coaches. 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) strategy.

Our apprentices, learners and employers can expect that we will provide a rich curriculum that provides the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in lifelong learning and employment. We aim to develop learners into successful professionals as well as valued members of society. We will ensure we deliver through trained and experienced staff who will treat individuals with respect and dignity.

Signposting to information from external agencies that offer impartial and independent IAG services & supportive networks, as appropriate in accordance to individuals’ needs. We will remain impartial and refer to other training providers and supporting partners where Kaplan is not best placed to meet an individual's career aspirations. Personal information will always be treated as strictly confidential in line with the Data Protection Act.

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*. Due to the diverse nature of Kaplan learners – both young people and adults - we have customised the Gatsby benchmarks to better suit the broader needs of our learners.

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 DfE 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**. Kaplan also holds ISO 27001 for Information Security Management Systems.

We continuously improve, reflect on and review our provision, seeking always to enhance and improve our CIAG service. Through self-assessment and standardisation, we build on feedback to make iterative enhancements and more fundamental changes to our delivery of CIAG. Through our international sister companies, we share best practice across Kaplan.

As a business our 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 behaviors training to ensure they stay inspired & competitive.
  • Ensure a tailored approach, addressing the career needs of every learner by recognising that in order to provide genuine fair and equal opportunities we cannot provide a linear programme.
  • Link the curriculum learning to careers through occupational expert teaching, employer engagement & End-Point Assessment preparation.
  • Listen and engage with the needs of our employers, designing training programmes that are relevant to industry & meet business strategies and goals.
  • Understand, learn from and share different viewpoints and experiences of workplaces; by listening to the learner voice, particularly our Apprenticeship Advisory Panel and participants in Apprentices of our Time.
  • Offer personal careers guidance from trained experts to those that need it most, in particular those who have experienced redundancies and those who we engage with through recruitment channels.
  • 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/media/1113/the-matrix-standard-guidance-for-organisations-07-jan-2020.pdf