For many young people and adults, making decisions about education and careers is like navigating in the dark. The right next step, the right course, apprenticeship, or career path, can be unclear, not because of a lack of aspiration, but because of a lack of information, guidance, and confidence.
Careerpilot and Lifepilot will help you navigate your way through all the choices.
These platforms offer structured, impartial information, guidance and tools that help users make informed choices about their futures. Used by over half a million young people and adults every year, the sites help users explore their aspirations/options and make plans for future careers. With a commitment to tackling some of the most persistent barriers to social mobility: gaps in knowledge, gaps in guidance, and gaps in confidence, Careerpilot and Lifepilot offer one-stop, free access, to award winning content designed by qualified career advisers.
Addressing Hidden Barriers
In theory, students in England can access a wide range of post-16 and post-18 options. In practice, those options are not always visible or equally accessible.
Students from underrepresented backgrounds are more likely to:
- Have limited access to independent careers advice.
- Be unaware of the full range of available pathways, particularly higher education and degree apprenticeships.
- Struggle with understanding how school subjects link to career opportunities.
- Feel uncertain about how to make competitive applications.
Careerpilot is designed to meet these gaps head-on, offering:
- Tools to explore career options starting from a subject, skill, or personal value.
- Course searches for apprenticeships and degrees.
- Resources to build skills profiles and action plans.
- Structured advice matched to each year group, helping students prepare at every stage.
Crucially, students can create personal accounts, track their progress, and return at key decision points, with over 240,000 students having accounts on the system.
Lifepilot extends the same principles to adults considering career changes or a return to education, recognising that pathways are not linear, and opportunities for progression should be accessible at every life stage.
A Tool for Students, Not Just for Schools
Careerpilot isn’t a substitute for good careers advice, it’s a way to extend it, especially in a system where schools often struggle to meet demand.
The platform has become a key part of regional and national widening participation efforts. In the South West alone, through a collaboration of SW universities and Uni Connects, including, the Wessex Inspiration Network, hundreds of students have engaged with Careerpilot through targeted sessions designed to build knowledge and confidence about next steps.
Survey feedback shows that students value the clarity and accessibility of the platform:
- 98% agree the site was useful;
- 96% agreed that Careerpilot helped them learn more about their choices
- 82% of users says they learnt that higher education could be a choice for them
- Students consistently report feeling less anxious and more informed about the routes available to them.
This is particularly important because the students who benefit most are often those who are least likely to receive detailed, sustained careers support elsewhere, having their own account allows them to utilise the resources as they want to.
Why It Matters
At its heart, the work of Careerpilot and Lifepilot is about equity of access to opportunity.
Without clear, accessible information, students are left to make life-defining decisions based on guesswork, limited examples from their immediate networks, or outdated assumptions about what is possible. This deepens existing inequalities — especially for first-generation applicants, those attending schools with limited careers provision, or those living in areas of low higher education participation.
Information gaps quickly become aspiration gaps.
Aspiration gaps quickly become opportunity gaps.
Careerpilot and Lifepilot intervene early enough to disrupt that cycle, giving students and adults the tools to see more options, understand them better, and take action with greater confidence.
But it’s not just about options, it’s about ownership.
These platforms support students to:
- Visualise futures they might not have otherwise considered.
- Develop the skills and knowledge needed to navigate complex decisions.
- Build confidence in their own ability to choose, pursue, and succeed in pathways that match their ambitions.
At a time when careers advice services are stretched, and when the labour market itself is evolving rapidly, these platforms offer a vital scaffold, particularly for those most at risk of being left behind.
At Bath, our continued investment in Careerpilot and Lifepilot reflects a simple principle:
Talent is everywhere. Opportunity isn’t.
If we want to change that, access to clear, impartial, personalised career guidance must be treated as a core part of social mobility, not a luxury.
Careerpilot and Lifepilot show that technology, when designed carefully and used ethically, can widen not just what students know, but what they believe is possible.
And that’s the foundation on which real access and participation is built.
