Comparing the parties policies on career guidance and related subjects

Over the last week the UK political parties have all brought out their manifestos. I’ve been summarising them from the perspective of career guidance and related subjects and have covered the Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and Green manifestos.

I thought that it might be nice to put this all together into a form that allows for easier comparison. So here we go…

	Conservative	Labour	Lib Dem	Green
Career guidance	No real policy. Assume a continuation of the current system. Increased access for people with disabilities.	Create a lifelong career guidance system Expand the Unionlearn fund.	Increase access to career guidance for adults. Improve career guidance in schools.	No policy committments
Schools	More funding (already announced)	More funding for schools. Replace Ofsted. Return schools to local authorities.	More funding. Reform Ofsted. Strengthen local authorities oversight of schools.	More funding for school. Scrap Ofsted. Return schools to local authorities.
Vocational education	More funding for further education	Increase funding for further education. Bring back the education maintenance allowance. Increase employer involvement. Broaden what the apprenticeship levy can be spent on.	Increase funding to further education. Bring back something like the education maintenance allowance. Broaden what the apprenticeship levy can be spent on.	Increase funding to further education.
Higher education	No real policy committments	Scrap tutition fees Bring back maintenance grants.	No real policy commitments.	Scrap tutition fees.
Adults	Launch a skills fund (no real details)	Create a lifelong National Education Service.	Create a ‘skills wallet’ to provide adults with funding for training at 25, 40 and 55.	Increase adult education funding.

Hopefully this gives you a useful summary to help guide your vote. I’ll be continuing with coverage of general election 19 and would be interested to hear from people who would like to add a guest post in the run up to the election talking about who they will (or won’t) be voting for and why.