Gatsby Benchmarks: the key changes every college needs to know

As the government announces significant employment reforms, including expanding work experience and careers advice, 2025 is shaping up to be a ground-breaking year for career guidance. At the Gatsby Foundation, we have been working to update our Gatsby Benchmarks – already used by over 4,700 colleges and schools – to ensure the framework continues to define the very best careers education, information and advice for young people.

The Gatsby Benchmarks

1. A stable careers programme
2. Learning from careers and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each young person
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experiences of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance

Careers guidance has been transformed since the benchmarks were introduced 10 years ago to provide a clear, evidence-based framework to help colleges and schools provide world-class careers guidance to young people. The dedication from colleges to making this happen has been impressive and the results speak for themselves.

• Mass adoption: more than 90% of colleges and schools now measure and plan their careers provision using the Gatsby Benchmarks.

• Widespread implementation: the average number of benchmarks being achieved has more than tripled since 2018.

• Tangible outcomes: young people in institutions that meet more of the benchmarks are significantly less likely to be not in employment, education or training (NEET) at the age of 16 and 18.

Good careers guidance is crucial for all young people whatever their background, driving social mobility and contributing to social justice. As well as incredible innovation in colleges and schools, the last 10 years have seen extensive education reforms, labour market shifts and technological change. In 2023, we set out to future-proof the benchmarks, updating the framework where the evidence showed potential to achieve even more for young people.

We thank everyone who helped us shape the updated Gatsby Benchmarks, including the Association of Colleges, who joined our advisory group, and the many colleges, like Education Partnership North East and Wigan & Leigh College, that formed our expert practitioner group. Your perspectives and expertise ensured the updates were grounded in the reality of students’ needs and the demands of today’s world.

You can read about the updated framework and the evidence and great practice that informed the changes in our Good Career Guidance: The Next Ten Years report.

While the core of the Gatsby Benchmarks remains the same, the changes we have made are really important. The changes centre around five key themes.

1. Careers at the heart of education and leadership

Careers guidance is both a whole-staff and a whole-institution endeavour. Updates emphasise the importance of linking careers to a college’s vision and strategic plans, as well as acknowledging the importance of staff development and including distinct responsibilities for leadership, governors, career leaders and advisers.

2. Inclusion and impact for each and every young person

Woven through multiple benchmarks are updates that emphasise the importance of tailoring provision to young people’s individual needs. We pay particular attention to inclusion and support for vulnerable or disadvantaged young people or those with special educational needs and disabilities.

3. Meaningful and varied encounters and experiences

Emphasis has been placed on multiple encounters and experiences and the impact of these. We have expanded the definitions of ‘meaningful’ in benchmarks five and seven, and added one to benchmark six. We have also emphasised that variety is important (e.g. with different settings for further and higher education, or different sizes of employer), as is giving young people time to prepare and reflect.

4. Focusing on the use of information and data

Careers information not only needs to be shared with young people but also used by them to inform their decisions. Data collection in colleges should now include intended destinations, as this helps inform how to tailor support. Knowing young people’s sustained destinations remains vital for evaluation.

5. Engagement of parents and carers

Parent and carer engagement has been strengthened, including highlighting the need for careers programmes to set out both how parents and carers will be engaged and how they will be helped to access and use labour market information, to ensure they can play their part confidently in supporting young people.

The government has confirmed its commitment to the Gatsby Benchmarks as the bedrock of its strategy to provide high-quality careers guidance to young people. The updated framework will be part of government guidance for colleges and schools, with updates to guidance being published in the spring.

We are encouraging everyone to read the report, share it with their networks and think strategically about what needs to happen so colleges can adopt the updated benchmarks into careers programmes in time for the 2025/26 academic year.

Beth Jones is the Head of Career Programmes for the Gatsby Foundation. Beth has led Gatsby’s work on the careers system in England for the last 10 years, building a transformative programme that delivers significant impact.