«The teacher guides through the process, the career counsellor complements»
Career expert Daniel Reumiller on the tasks and limits of career counselling and what helps when parents judge their child differently than the school when choosing a career.
Mr Reumiller, many schools and teachers work closely with their pupils and offer careers advice themselves. How do you feel about this?
The teacher guides young people through the career choice process. This is also provided for in Curriculum 21. Careers counsellors contribute their professional expertise. This applies to individual pupils as well as to the school and the individual teacher.
Many young people only come into contact with careers counselling at school. What about the quality of careers counselling provided by teachers?
Only around a third of all young people receive individual careers counselling. However, classes and parents take part in compulsory careers guidance information events. This is the case across the board. As far as the quality of careers advice provided by schools is concerned, every school in the canton of Berne has to draw up a career choice plan and discuss it with the experts at the relevant careers information centre. Of course, not all teachers are equally familiar with vocational training. We are in contact with them to ensure the quality of the support provided by the teachers.
Where does the school's responsibility for career counselling end?
This is not clearly defined and depends on the experience and knowledge of the teacher. Career counselling is responsible for providing information on individual professions as well as on the entire spectrum of the world of work, on questions of choice and on the possibilities of the vocational education and training system. In-depth clarifications and diagnostics are clearly the tasks of careers counselling.
So each teacher has to clarify this individually with the relevant careers information centre?
Cooperation is important. The teacher knows the pupil and their strengths and weaknesses very well. Even if a pupil comes to the careers advice centre, this should not be separate from the careers guidance at school. Here too, the teacher guides the young person through the process. Careers counselling supplements where additional expertise is required.
Find your own path in seven steps
- Step 1: Get to know your own interests and strengths
How everyday habits and dreams can serve as a guide to self-assessment for young people. A questionnaire for career selectors. - Step 2: Get to know professions and training programmes
An overview of the most important educational programmes, professions of the future, where the shortage of apprentices and skilled workers is greatest and which career paths lead via a university. - Step 3: Compare your own strengths with the requirements of professions and training programmes
Comparing your own skills with the requirements of professions, how people with disabilities can find their way into the desired working environment and what role performance tests play. - Step 4: Get to know interesting professions in a taster apprenticeship
The career choice internship is the reality check: what forms of taster apprenticeships there are and what young people need to know about taster apprenticeships. - Step 5: Review possible professions and training programmes and make a decision
To what extent starting a career is an important step in personal development, why the training company must be as good a fit as the profession - and how young professionals compete for titles. - Step 6: Look for an apprenticeship or register with a school
What is important when looking for an apprenticeship, how to make a good impression at an interview and ten tips for a convincing application portfolio. - Step 7: Prepare for the apprenticeship or school or clarify bridging programmes
Once you have decided what you want to do after compulsory schooling, it is important to find out more and prepare for it - otherwise there are a number of useful bridging programmes.
How do you deal with parents who think the teacher is misjudging their child?
This situation occurs again and again: the teacher says, for example, that a commercial apprenticeship is unrealistic with these school results, but the parents see it differently. As career counsellors, we can provide a more neutral, objective view here. Our potential assessments are independent of what has happened between a teacher and a pupil in everyday school life.
What can be optimised in the cooperation between school and careers guidance?
In principle, the dialogue is already very good. In the canton of Bern, for example, the careers counsellor responsible discusses with the teacher for each pupil what is needed for a good follow-up solution. As far as I know, this also applies to many other cantons. But of course not every single school is at the same stage and not every teacher is up to date with the latest developments in the world of work and the vocational education and training system.
