Re-imagining Careers Strategy: What the Updated Gatsby Benchmarks Mean for Your School or College
What do the updated Gatsby Benchmarks mean for you?
Work in careers education doesn’t stand still, and neither should we. With the updated Gatsby Benchmarks coming into effect from September 2025, the landscape is shifting again. Now is the moment to pause, reflect, and ensure your careers programme is not just compliant, but future-ready.
In this post, we’ll explore:
- What’s new in the Gatsby Benchmarks
- Why the changes matter
- How you can audit and adapt your offer in light of them
- And how we at Changing Education Group can support you across every benchmark
What has changed?
Over the last decade the Gatsby Benchmarks have become a bedrock of careers strategy. More than 90 % of schools and colleges now use them.
But as policy, practice and the labour market continue to evolve, so too must our frameworks. That’s why, after two years of evidence gathering and consultation, the updated Benchmarks were launched in September 2025.
You’ll see five emerging themes threaded through the updates:
- Careers at the heart of education and leadership.
- Inclusion and impact for each and every young person.
- Meaningful and varied encounters and experiences.
- A sharper focus on the use of information and data.
- Engagement of parents and carers.
These updates don’t overturn the framework, you’ll notice all eight benchmarks remain, but many of the measurable criteria, expectations on leadership, and emphasis on equity / stakeholder involvement have been strengthened.
In short: the bar hasn’t moved sideways. It’s rising.
The eight Gatsby Benchmarks, what do they mean now?
Below is a guided look at each benchmark, with what’s new and how you might respond.
Gatsby Benchmark 1: A stable careers programme
The refreshed guidance emphasises that careers should sit at the heart of your institution. That means your careers programme needs strategic backing, visible ownership by governors/leadership, and a clearly defined role for your Careers Leader working alongside SLT. It’s no longer enough for careers to be a “nice-to-have”; it must be embedded in your school’s vision, development plan, and resourced accordingly.
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Updated expectations require that you use data not simply to inform students’ choices, but to tailor your careers offer by analysing aspirations, intended destinations, and local labour market trends.
The emphasis is shifting from “we share LMI” to “we understand what LMI means for your students, and adjust accordingly.”
Gatsby Benchmark 3: Addressing the needs of each young person
Equity is front and centre. The updated Benchmarks emphasise tailoring provision for students with disadvantage, SEND or other barriers.
You’ll need to show that your programme doesn’t treat every student the same, it treats them fairly.
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers
There’s increased weight on embedding careers learning across subjects and ensuring staff beyond the careers leader, teachers, departments, even pastoral teams, see the connection between curriculum and employability.
It’s about shaping the curriculum to connect learning with real-world pathways, not just tacking on employer talks at the end of term.
Gatsby Benchmark 5: Encounters with employers and employees
The updated wording emphasises meaningful and varied encounters.
Virtual, in-person, hybrid, short-format vs project-led, all can play a part, provided you build prep, debrief, and embed purpose.
This is one of the Benchmarks where your employer engagement strategy really matters: depth over tick-boxes.
Gatsby Benchmark 6: Experiences of workplaces
Again, this is core to your Work Experience Suite offer. The refreshed Benchmarks push for workplace experience that goes beyond observation, active participation, structured learning outcomes, aligned feedback loops, and equity of access for all students.
It also reinforces that experiences should be reflective: students prepare, they engage, then reflect on what they’ve learned.
Gatsby Benchmark 7: Encounters with further and higher education
This Benchmark continues to require planned, sustained interaction with colleges, universities, apprenticeship providers and technical education. The update puts more weight on variety and inclusive approach, making sure encounters aren’t just for aspirational students, but embedded across the journey.
Gatsby Benchmark 8: Personal guidance
Personal guidance remains critical, one-to-one or small-group guidance delivered by a trained adviser. What’s new is stronger expectation around its alignment with your wider Careers Strategy, its quality, governance oversight, and how you evidence its impact.
Why it matters, beyond compliance?
It’s tempting to treat Gatsby as a checklist. But the refreshed Benchmarks are an invitation to leadership-led continuous improvement.
- Ofsted- readiness: This is no longer an optional extra. Inspectors expect clarity on how your careers programme links to leadership, strategy, and learner outcomes.
- Strategic alignment: You’ll build stronger purpose when careers sits alongside wellbeing, inclusion, attendance and attainment improvement goals.
- Equity & social mobility: The renewed emphasis on inclusion, data, and parental engagement means your programme can no longer be “good for the majority”; it must intentionally reach those who have been underserved.
- Resilience & reputation: Careers education is increasingly visible to governors, trustees, and external stakeholders. A well-designed Gatsby-aligned programme builds confidence inside and outside your institution.
And when implemented well, higher benchmark achievement is linked to better student satisfaction with careers guidance. and lower likelihood of becoming NEET.
What practical steps can you take to reflect and respond this year?
Here are tactical steps you might take to review your careers provision against the updated Benchmarks, and begin adapting it.
- Audit your current provision
– Use your existing data: how many Gatsby Benchmarks are you currently meeting? Which ones weakest?
– Review your evidence: logs of employer & workplace encounters, student surveys, outcome data. - Engage leaders & governors
– Bring the Benchmarks into your school’s strategic plan.
– Share your findings with SLT/Governors and ask: “Is careers something they see as core to our mission?” - Strengthen employer & workplace experiences
– Map your existing employer encounters and work experience programmes.
– Within the mapped gaps, build meaningful, reflective experiences.
– Consider virtual/hybrid complements to in-person provision to improve access. - Ensure inclusion & equity is baked in
– Identify groups (SEND, disadvantaged, rural, etc.) who may under-engage.
– Tailor experiences or support for those students.
– Make sure parent/carer voices are accounted for in planning. - Embed data-driven planning
– Gather student aspiration & destination data, not just historical outcomes.
– Use that insight to shape your encounter strategy (employers, FE/HE, curriculum links). - Use opportunities for meaningful encounters beyond placements
– Workshops, employer-led projects, hybrid sessions, micro-placements, insight days.
– Integrate them with curriculum learning (e.g. subject-linked mini-projects). - Monitor, reflect and iterate
– Collect feedback from students, employers and staff.
– Reflect on what worked & what didn’t, loop that learning into the next cycle.
– Share impact with senior leadership and governors. - Check how your digital tools support your goals
– Is your work experience/placement software capturing evidence, organising risk & compliance, delivering feedback loops?
– Are you able to report to SLT/governors on Gatsby-aligned encounters/outcomes?
Final thoughts
If the refreshed Gatsby Benchmarks ask more of us, that’s because they expect more of our young people. They reinforce that careers is not an “add-on”, but a thread woven through strategy, curriculum, and equity.
Moving from compliance to meaningful impact requires reflection, adjustment, and partnership. At The Changing Education Group we’re here to help schools and colleges translate ambition into action. Whether that’s through strengthening your employer-encounters, designing workplace experiences with equity in mind, or ensuring your leadership evidence alignment with SLT, we’d love to explore how your Gatsby alignment journey could evolve next.
Let’s talk about what the updated Gatsby Benchmarks mean for your school.