Have you ever read a job description and wondered exactly how the required "degree level" education made someone best equipped to do it? I know I have - far too often.
A careers advice firm that recruits volunteers from the business community will co-ordinate efforts to establish Jobcentre Plus in English schools, it has been announced.
Like a piercing, bitter English winter, Chancellor George Osbourne's "autumn statement" was eye-wateringly harsh. It is, without doubt, children and young people growing up in the most deprived households who are being asked to bear the brunt.
While I often disagree with Michael Gove on the "how", I applaud his passion for making things better. As he said in his letter to the education select committee: "Regardless of our party affiliation or political principles, we all share a fierce determination to make opportunity more equal." I share that determination.
Just a few days ago, I spent some time talking to a group of young people who live near me. The conversation was started by a chance remark I heard one of them make while I was waiting for the bus.
While we soldier on through this age of austerity, more and more little people are appearing. England's birth rate has been creeping up for some years now and the Office for National Statistics projects that it will continue to do so for some time.
The youth unemployment figures - over one million and rising - were not unexpected, but are intensely worrying. The national figure is bad enough, but the regional variation means that in some areas there is a real danger of endemic long-term unemployment.
All the directors and local politicians I've spoken to of late agree that the impact of the cuts has only just begun to be felt, and that there is much pain yet to come. This is a hard message for colleagues in services at risk and for the young people they serve.
Management of children's services will increasingly be a shared undertaking between local authorities that are striving to make savings, if a survey of council decision-makers is anything to go by.
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