All students, irrespective of their needs, ethnic backgrounds and cognitive abilities, are given support to follow further and higher education and to appreciate the concept of lifelong learning.Up until a number of years ago, we talked about jobs for life, career paths, seniority and the ability to progress up the ladder of one’s organisation.
Society is going through considerable changes in economy, technology and science. Needless to say, these changes are affecting the labour market, job mobility, loyalties to organisations and educational needs. Nowadays, we don’t talk about one job for life.
The buzzwords have shifted to ‘boundaryless careers’, ‘definite contracts’, ‘sub-contracting’ and ‘freelance’, among others. Young people are pursuing higher education, moving in between organisations, changing jobs, shifting from education to work and back to education or studying while working a full-time job.
This is causing major changes in the way we perceive careers, employment and education. As a result, the education department sought to invest in trainee career advisers to guide students into this new mentality of education and employability.
The trainee career adviser’s role is to assist in the design of career programmes in collaboration with the students’ parents and other professionals in education and the labour market. Such programmes include transition from one educational stage to another, especially from school to post-secondary education and work.
Career guidance professionals help students to achieve the skills needed to follow major career and educational paths and to face labour market challenges
Trainee career advisers work hand in hand with parents and guidance teachers to promote good decision-making skills, effective subject choices from Year 6 to Form 1 and from Form 2 to Form 3 and planning of career paths.
Moreover, trainee career advisers encourage the development of employability skills through one-to-one career guidance, CV building, interviews and job exposure, whereby students observe various careers within the industry.
Locally, students are being encouraged to participate in non-formal and informal educational activities, which will then be written on their school-leaving certificate. Non-formal education details activities done under the school tutelage, such as participation in the school choir, in Ekoskola and in Job Exposure.
Informal education refers to activities done outside school hours, such as voluntary work, art classes and sports. The career guidance professional’s role is to advise students that non-formal and informal education are as essential as the education one learns at school.
Through these activities, students develop a variety of skills which aid successful employment, such as effective communication, teamwork, leadership and entrepreneurship.
Additionally, students are encouraged to bridge education to work and reduce negative perceptions to learning. But most importantly, students learn the concept of transferrable skills, a concept that enables them to appreciate that the skills learnt from these activities can then be transferred to the workplace and to other major areas in their life.
Moreover, the local education system is currently working to reduce the rate of early school leavers according to the targets of the EU 2020 Strategy. Some students leave compulsory education feeling unprepared to find employment or to pursue a higher education course.
Others feel demotivated to pursue either vocational or academic paths for a number of reasons, such as access to work in the family business, financial pressures, disinterest in the educational environment and health difficulties.
Through career advisory sessions, career guidance professionals help students to achieve the skills needed to follow major career and educational paths and to face labour market challenges.
All students, irrespective of their needs, ethnic backgrounds and cognitive abilities, are given support to follow further and higher education and to appreciate the concept of lifelong learning.
In today’s labour market, one’s career route has ceased to be one straight line, one job for life. Planning is of essence and so is flexibility.
Veronique Cassar has completed her postgraduate diploma in Guidance Studies from the University of Derby, UK, through online distance learning. She accomplished this with the assistance of a scholarship awarded under the Career Guidance Capacity Building Scholarship Scheme. This scholarship was part-financed by the EU, Operational Programme II- Cohesions Policy 2007-2013 – Empowering people for more jobs and better quality life – ESF 1.24.
Veronique Cassar works as a trainee career adviser at St Clare College.