Careers counselling as a business, since the families guess

A first step

Offer free 45-minute careers sessions to 10 A-Level students in one town, covering jobs, courses and what each pays, and ask their parents to sit in. Ask the parents afterwards what they would have paid for it. Then run a paid session for a family who heard about it from another. A family who pays after word of mouth is the proof.

Who pays first

A family deciding between university, a polytechnic and a job, who will pay to replace guesswork with a plan.

What leaves today

Families guess at careers and choose on prestige, so the polytechnic that leads to a job is passed over for a place that may never come.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. OneThe Letter That Says Yes and Means No
  177,588 qualified, 45,000 placed

More from cluster 16

• 321Employer-owned technical colleges: the hotels train the chefs, the port trains the planners
• 322Apprenticeship brokers who match a firm to a student and handle the paperwork, for a fee from the firm
• 323Nursing colleges to the British and Australian standard, with the return clause built into the fees
• 324Electrician, plumber and welder certification centres whose certificates are recognised abroad
• 325English tutoring by video for the districts, at a price a family can pay, with a test at the end
• 326Tuition classes that publish their pass rates, so that parents can compare

All 20 ideas in this cluster