A career platform for education helps UK schools, colleges, and training providers deliver personalised guidance at scale. Learn what features drive real student outcomes.
Career guidance in UK education has changed substantially over the past decade. The Gatsby Benchmarks established clear expectations, Ofsted sharpened its focus on careers provision, and digital tools became central to how institutions deliver support.
A career platform for education is not a replacement for qualified guidance. It is infrastructure that makes guidance more effective by handling administrative functions, freeing advisers to focus on strategic support.
Yet many careers leaders still struggle with fragmented systems. Spreadsheets track one thing, a separate website handles another, and evidence of impact requires hours of manual compilation.
A career platform for education consolidates these functions. It provides the technology infrastructure that enables personalised guidance at scale, systematic tracking, and the evidence that inspectors and funders require.
This guide examines how career platforms work in educational settings, what distinguishes effective solutions from ineffective ones, and how UK providers can evaluate options for their context. For guidance specifically focused on employability tools, see our companion article on employability platforms for education.
The Gatsby Charitable Foundation published its original benchmarks in 2014. Since then, achievement has risen significantly. The average number of benchmarks achieved by secondary schools and colleges increased from 1.8 out of eight in 2017 to 5.8 in 2024.
This progress reflects substantial effort by careers leaders, supported by infrastructure from The Careers & Enterprise Company and improved government guidance. Yet challenges remain.
The 2024 benchmark updates emphasised several themes that technology can address:
Career platforms emerged partly in response to these demands. When you have 1,500 students and one careers leader, technology becomes essential for delivering personalised provision.
The term "career platform" covers a range of tools with varying capabilities. At its core, a career platform for education should support three functions:
These are the resources students use directly. They might include:
The quality of these tools matters enormously. Students form impressions of careers guidance based on what they interact with. Outdated interfaces, irrelevant content, or confusing navigation undermine engagement before guidance even begins.
Behind the scenes, careers leaders need tools to manage provision:
Manual approaches to these tasks consume time that could be spent on direct student support.
Schools and colleges must demonstrate that careers provision is effective. This requires data:
Career platforms should produce this reporting automatically, drawing on data already collected through normal use. For providers prioritising outcome measurement, our guide on education outcomes platforms examines this in detail..
Not all career platforms deliver equal value. When evaluating options, it is important to focus on features that support real operational needs, learner outcomes, and reporting requirements, rather than surface-level functionality.
Effective career guidance requires accurate labour market information. Students making decisions about A-level choices, apprenticeships, or university courses need to understand employment prospects, salary expectations, and skills demand.
Look for platforms that integrate current LMI data, ideally drawing from sources like the Office for National Statistics, sector skills councils, and regional labour market analyses.
The Careers & Enterprise Company publishes regional labour market information through its Career Hubs. Platforms that integrate or reference this data provide more relevant local context than those offering only national statistics.
The updated Gatsby Benchmarks specify what good careers provision looks like. Career platforms should explicitly support benchmark achievement.
✔ Gatsby-aligned capabilities
✖ Not suitable
The updated benchmarks emphasise inclusion, with particular attention to students with SEND and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Career platforms should support this through:
Career platforms do not operate in isolation. They must work alongside other institutional systems including:
Before selecting a career platform, map your current systems and data flows. Identify where integration would save time and where standalone functionality is acceptable. This prevents purchasing solutions that create more work rather than less.
Technology implementation in education frequently fails not because the software is poor but because implementation is mishandled.
Staff need time to learn new systems. Budget for initial training sessions and ongoing support as staff encounter new situations. Assuming that intuitive interfaces require no training consistently proves wrong.
Students will not use tools they do not understand or see value in. Structured introduction, ideally embedded in PSHE or tutorial time, builds engagement. Simply providing login details and hoping for the best produces minimal uptake.
The updated Gatsby Benchmarks emphasise that careers provision is a whole-institution endeavour. Without senior leadership support, career platforms become marginalised as "the careers leader's thing" rather than integrated into institutional practice.
Platforms produce valuable data only if that data is accurate. Establish clear protocols for data entry and regularly audit quality. Garbage in, garbage out applies to careers tracking as much as any other system.
For detailed implementation guidance, our article on choosing an education employability platform covers the full procurement and setup process.
Career platforms represent an investment. Demonstrating return on that investment requires clear evaluation.
These track engagement and activity:
Process measures indicate whether the platform is being used. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate impact.
These track destinations and satisfaction:
Outcome measurement requires longer timescales. The HESA Graduate Outcomes survey, which contacts graduates 15 months after completion, provides a useful model. Students' situations immediately after leaving education often differ from their medium-term outcomes. For detailed guidance on outcome measurement methodology, see our article on measuring career outcomes in education.
Where possible, compare outcomes before and after platform implementation, or between student groups with different levels of engagement. This helps isolate the platform's contribution from other factors affecting destinations.
Establish baseline measurements before implementing a new platform. Without baseline data, you cannot demonstrate that the platform has improved outcomes, even if results are positive.
Artificial intelligence features increasingly appear in career platforms. These range from sophisticated to superficial.
Potentially valuable applications:
Applications requiring caution:
The key question is whether AI features genuinely improve outcomes or simply provide marketing differentiation. Ask vendors for evidence of effectiveness, not just feature descriptions.
For careers leaders considering a career platform, a structured evaluation process helps identify the right solution.
Yotru's platform for educators provides AI-powered career tools designed specifically for UK educational settings. It combines student-facing resume building and career exploration with the institutional tracking and reporting features that careers leaders need.
Team Yotru
Employability Systems & Applied Research
Team Yotru
Employability Systems & Applied Research
We build career tools informed by years working in workforce development, employability programs, and education technology. We work with training providers and workforce organizations to create practical tools for employment and retraining programs—combining labor market insights with real-world application to support effective career development. Follow us on LinkedIn.
A career platform for education is software that supports careers provision in schools, colleges, and training providers. It typically combines student-facing tools like career exploration and CV building with staff-facing administration and reporting features.
This article is written for careers leaders, education administrators, and decision-makers evaluating career platform options for UK schools, colleges, and training providers. It addresses practical selection and implementation considerations.
Analysis draws on published Gatsby Foundation research, Department for Education guidance, Ofsted inspection frameworks, and Careers & Enterprise Company resources. Platform functionality analysis reflects common features across the education technology sector.
Yotru maintains Editorial Policy standards requiring accuracy, neutrality, and regular review. Content is updated as guidance and technology evolve.
This article provides general information about career platforms in education. Specific implementation decisions should consider individual institutional circumstances. Outcomes vary based on implementation quality, student engagement, and local labour market conditions.
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If you are working on employability programs, hiring strategy, career education, or workforce outcomes and want practical guidance, you are in the right place.
Yotru supports individuals and organizations navigating real hiring systems. That includes resumes and ATS screening, career readiness, program design, evidence collection, and alignment with employer expectations. We work across education, training, public sector, and industry to turn guidance into outcomes that actually hold up in practice.
Part of Yotru's commitment to helping professionals succeed in real hiring systems through evidence-based guidance.
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