Extra tuition also affected as teachers are made redundant, lessons are axed and local authorities cut services
In the current economic crisis, teenagers need more careers help than ever, but schools are saving their funds by just pointing pupils to websites and only giving tailored advice to those with special needs.
Meanwhile essential help for children falling behind in maths and English is being scaled back and art and music teachers are losing their jobs or having their budgets cut.
Thousands of career advisers, such as Carley Irving, careers co-ordinator at Sprowston Community High School in Norwich, are having their hours cut. Her hours have been reduced from 37 a week to 22.5. She says she can no longer see all pupils aged 15 and 16 and can only give half an hour to those she does see. She used to give pupils an hour. "We can signpost pupils to websites, but if they don't know how to use them or don't have the inclination to, they won't," Irving says.
Those that cannot get advice from their parents, relatives or family friends will be left to make decisions on their own.
At one Kent secondary school, only pupils with special needs now receive careers advice. Jane, who works at the school as head of careers, does not want to reveal her name or her school. "We simply won't be able to hold face-to-face interviews for anyone else ... my worry is that unless pupils get some kind of career advice, they risk dropping out of education and training altogether," she says.
Connexions, a careers advice centre for 13- to 25-year-olds, is in flux while the government is in the process of setting up a National Careers Service.
One-to-one tuition in maths and English for pupils who are falling behind is being dramatically reduced. Researchers have found the tuition accelerates pupils' progress and gives them confidence. But in April, funds for one-to-ones tuition stopped being ring-fenced and many schools have diverted the funds elsewhere.
Many local authorities have a service that co-ordinates one-to-one tuition in schools. But in areas, such as Hertfordshire, the services have had to be cut. Hertfordshire county council says it has noticed that fewer schools are giving such tuition and has reduced its team from six to two.
The government has cut council budgets and one of the consequences is a squeeze on music services. These services provide teachers, equipment and sometimes free tuition to pupils. Music services in Hounslow and Bolton have been cut by 10% this year.
A tightening of school budgets has led to redundancies for music teachers and pupils being allocated fewer hours of teaching in the subject each week.
The Guardian spoke to a secondary school in Cheshire, which does not want to be named, where the head of music has been made redundant this year and the first two year groups now only have one hour of music every fortnight, rather than every week.
Art in schools is suffering too.
The National Society for Education in Art and Design says the subject is "staring into the abyss". The reason is a combination of constrained school budgets and the perception that art is no longer important to the government because it is not part of the English baccalaureate – a package of subjects that ministers want more pupils to study.
At Chenderit school in Northamptonshire, which has specialist arts status, the budget for visual arts has been cut from £120,000 to £35,000 this year. One art teacher, who works as an adviser to schools across the country and doesn't want to be named, says art departments can no longer afford kilns, digital cameras or oil paints and are making do with pencils and sketchpads instead. He says school art budgets have fallen by about 10% this year.
Jessica Shepherd