A new diploma course is set to produce a new breed of school counsellor who is better versed in giving advice to students about career choices and the world of work.
The two-year Diploma in Social Studies (Occupational Guidance & Career Counselling), which starts in February, will be the first of its kind in Malta. It will be run by the Workers' Participation Development Centre and its study units will range from career counselling and placement skills to labour market trends and employer needs.
The course will seek to improve the skills, awareness and general competence of many individuals already responsible for guiding and counselling students, workers and would-be workers on career choices.
Prof. Godfrey Baldacchino, the centre's director, said school counsellors have so far been trained mainly to handle individual psycho-social problems in a school context, and find themselves giving advice on possible careers "without any formal knowledge of how the labour market operates".
On the other hand, employment advisors have hardly any formal understanding of how the educational system works, he said.
"Both sets of officials carry a grave responsibility, but each seems to have what the other lacks in terms of skill and appreciation of the world out there.
"The new diploma - a complete first - will seek to bridge this gap. It will seek to attract participants from the spheres of both education and employment, and thus foster a healthy interchange between the two in the university classroom, the context for what should be a participative adult-education environment.
"We have a lot of respect for all those who try to mentor and provide advice to students," said Prof. Baldacchino.
"The key novelty here is to upgrade the basis of such advice by a stronger appreciation of what labour markets and business organisations are, how they operate, how they evolve."
At the same time, workers or people actively looking for work were in as much need of qualified guidance as students, he said. The over 30 private employment agencies in existence could easily upgrade their services to include this area.
"Restructuring, privatisation, downsizing, technological change are obliging a radical consideration of the snug, 'job-for-life' attitude. There are some 40,000 job changes in Malta registered by the ETC every year."
Prof. Baldacchino was asked if he thought students in general were leaving school with too little knowledge of the world of work and how to steer their own course through it.
The education system, he confirmed, still had too much of an academic bias. Practical knowledge was discounted and the experience of work as educational in its own right was under-rated.
"The world of work is often looked upon with suspicion by educators, and the undue emphasis placed by many employers on specific training rather than education widens this gap.
"Still, the facts are irreversible. Education and employment must develop a better interface, one which takes fuller cognisance of lifelong learning, re-training, apprenticeships, sandwich courses, professional development, accreditation of prior knowledge and other initiatives."
This will be the fifth diploma programme in applied social studies to be run by the Workers' Participation Development Centre, the oldest institute at the University of Malta, set up in 1981.
http://home.um.edu.mt/wpdc