The Gatsby Benchmarks are the backbone of careers provision in English schools and colleges. Most careers leaders can name them — but the real work is evidencing progress against all eight without burning out your team. This guide walks through what each benchmark actually asks for, and where the practical wins are.
The benchmarks were refreshed and adopted into DfE guidance — the eight titles are unchanged, but the criteria beneath them were rewritten. See what changed in the updated Gatsby Benchmarks →
The eight benchmarks, in plain English
A stable careers programme
A written, board-approved careers programme that students, parents, teachers and employers all know about. The word that matters is “stable” — it should outlast any single member of staff. Publish it on your website and review it annually.
Learning from career and labour market information
Every student — and their parents — should have access to good-quality labour market information (LMI) and the support to interpret it. This is where abstract “career ideas” become grounded in real pay, demand and entry routes.
Addressing the needs of each pupil
Careers provision should be tailored, and you should keep systematic records of the individual advice each student receives. Diagnostic and self-reflection activities are one of the simplest ways to generate this evidence at scale.
Linking curriculum learning to careers
Subject teachers — not just the careers lead — help students understand how their subjects connect to future paths. A ten-minute “where this leads” activity inside a normal lesson counts, and is easy to evidence.
Encounters with employers and employees
At least one meaningful encounter with an employer every year. “Meaningful” is the operative word: a simulation, a mock recruitment round or an employer-set challenge often lands harder than a careers-fair walk-past.
Experiences of workplaces
First-hand experience of a workplace. Where placements are hard to arrange at scale, immersive in-school simulations can bridge the gap and prepare students to get more out of the real thing.
Encounters with further and higher education
Students should understand the full range of routes — apprenticeships, FE, HE and training — through direct encounters. Balance is key: an academic school still owes its students honest information about technical routes.
Personal guidance
Every student should have at least one guidance interview with a qualified careers adviser by the age of 18. Structured pre-work makes each interview far more productive — students arrive with questions instead of a blank page.
Where careers leaders get stuck
Benchmarks 5 and 6 — employer encounters and workplace experiences — are consistently the hardest to hit at scale, because they depend on partners outside your control. This is where in-school simulations earn their place: they give every student a repeatable, meaningful encounter without needing forty employers on speed-dial.
A well-run recruitment simulation touches four benchmarks at once. It is a structured employer-style encounter (BM5), a taste of a real workplace process (BM6), it links directly to labour-market realities (BM2), and the debrief generates individual records of the advice each student took away (BM3). That is the kind of leverage a stretched team needs.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Gatsby Benchmarks?
The Gatsby Benchmarks are eight standards of good career guidance for schools and colleges in England, defined by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and adopted in the Government’s careers strategy. They form the framework schools use to plan and measure their careers provision.
Are the Gatsby Benchmarks statutory?
Schools are expected to work towards all eight benchmarks, and use of them is referenced in statutory careers guidance. While the benchmarks themselves are a framework rather than law, meeting them is how schools demonstrate they are fulfilling their statutory careers duties.
Which Gatsby Benchmarks are hardest to meet?
Careers leaders most often report Benchmark 5 (encounters with employers) and Benchmark 6 (experiences of workplaces) as the hardest, because they depend on external partners and logistics. In-school simulations and employer-set challenges are common, scalable ways to strengthen both.