Every day young people have to make important decisions about their future career. Their desires and expectations change over time, with exposure to a variety of influencers such as media, new technology, family/peer group expectations and changes in social mobility. What is interesting to educators, employers and learners is to see how young people’s career interests have changed and which careers are increasing in popularity.

How do we find out about young people’s career interests? One of the ways we can do this is by looking at data that is captured from an interactive careers interest tool used in the majority of secondary schools and colleges across the UK. Every year as part of their careers exploration, hundreds of thousands of young people use an online program called Kudos to help them with their career choices. The data captured from users of Kudos provides an insight into young people’s career interests and can highlight significant changes.

Data from Kudos for the academic year 2011/12 for around 425,000 young people from August 2011-July 2012 reveals the most viewed careers during this period:

Levi Roots is today launching his School of Life Tour, which will see the well-known entrepreneur visit many schools throughout the year in a bid to get more young people excited about cooking and making music, as well as motivating them to success.

In support of the Government’s initiative to introduce compulsory cookery lessons for kids aged seven to fourteen, Levi’s tour will enable him to chat to students about his passion for food and music and show them how exciting both subjects can be. Levi will tailor his visits to individual schools, offering students a flavour of his music and his golden rules of success in business, as well as the chance to join him for a cookery lesson. For Secondary school students, Levi will also give an honest and inspirational insight into his life and show how determination and passion can be the keys to success.

As it's National Careers Week, I would like to share some of my top tips that will help students choose the right career.

1. Make it fun and widen your choices

Using online resources is a great way to explore your options. Planning your future should be fun. You could be working abroad or working in a profession yet to be invented - the world is your oyster. What can be more exciting than thinking about where you could be in five years time? Don’t forget to research careers you have not heard of before. For example, you may enjoyed maths, and the obvious choice might be an Accountant, but what about an Actuary or Quantity Surveyor, to name but two alternatives?

National Careers Week (NCW) is being celebrated this week (4th March – 8th March 2013). This event focuses on careers guidance activities to support young people leaving education and the variety of options that are available to them.

It’s an opportunity for schools and colleges to raise the profile of the careers advice and guidance that they provide to students all year round, through a range of career-related activities. Already, over 1,500 schools have signed up and will give 1.1 million students the support they need to make informed choices about their first step on the career ladder. Last year, schools downloaded more than 25,000 free NCW resources during the week including videos, case studies and information about the world of work information.

Young people across Surrey are being engaged and inspired about their futures with more than 35,000 teenagers using the county's new online careers information service to plan their next move.

All young people between the ages of 13 and 19-years-old in Surrey have free access to U-Explore, the online careers and employability platform dedicated to inspiring students about their futures and placing them in control of their own progression. This service is part of Surrey County Council's Youth Engagement Contract.

U-Explore's careers and employability platform has been named as a key supporting tool in a recent research report that looks at how local authorities have supported schools with careers guidance.

'Hidden talents: Examples of transition of careers guidance from local authorities to schools' is published by the Local Government Association (LGA) and National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), and collates case study examples from eight local authorities across England of how they are supporting schools to undertake their new duty, which came into effect from September 2012, to provide independent and impartial careers guidance to young people in their school.

From September 2012, schools were given the responsibility of securing independent and impartial career guidance for students in Years 9-11. However, from September 2013, this duty will be extended to include Year 8 students and 16-18-year-olds in both schools and colleges.

In May 2012, the Department for Education published a consultation on extending the duty down to Year 8 and up to 16-18-year-olds. There were 327 respondents, including career professionals, local authorities, further education institutions and academies.

U-Explore have announced a new addition to their careers and employability platform: Action Plan.

U-Explore's unique Action Plan is based on a timeline and is far more intuitive and fun to use than a traditional notebook or diary-based action plan. It has been created to move fluidly with learners throughout their educational journey, enabling them to set goals and see these goals and actions clearly displayed on a timeline.

A multi-functional application, the Action Plan can be used to track both educational goals, such as 'achieve A-C grade in Maths', and also long-term career goals including 'begin career as data analyst', for example. These get added to the timeline as goals and associated actions.

There are just a few weeks left until Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2012 begins and this year's theme is all about passing on help and support to budding entrepreneurs.

Taking place from November 12 to 18, GEW 2012 aims to:

- Encourage people who are not yet entrepreneurs to think about starting up their own business
- Improve entrepreneurship skills for aspiring entrepreneurs and start-ups
- Help people to access practical support - locally, regionally and nationally

This will be done by passing on skills, contacts, knowledge, confidence and resources.

Interactive maps linking learners to education and training opportunities around the UK go live on U-Explore's national careers platform this week.

The interactive, dynamic and searchable maps of the UK will be available through the dedicated Further Education, Higher Education and Apprenticeships walls, which can be found in the My Options application.