to think careers advice for young people IS important?

[drinkcoffee]

So the cuts so far in many areas are falling on Connexions - the 'Careers Service', already underfunded and deskilled! I'm sure many of you may have got bad careers advice at school or have a horror story about what the 'Careers Adviser' told them to do!!

BUT I think it is terrible that most young people will now be denied the chance to talk about their future with someone who doesn't have a vested interest i.e. school teacher, parent.

I used to work for the service and saw hundreds of young people making the wrong decisions, spending thousands on degree courses which haven't helped them get where they want to be in life. Young people are faced with a huge battle to get their first job or training these days and will need more help than ever.

AIBU??

What info/advice can a career adviser really give that a teenager cant access online or through books?

I'm not sure they are as a lot of private schools have no form of careers service and pupils from these schools tend to do fine in the jobs market.

yanbu

course it is, but i wasn't that impressed with connexions for ds(16) they didn't advise him to try for university and think that wasn't very helpful

They would be better to get people in to talk about their work to back up the careers advisor. If they had a Parents Careers evening then that would probably cover the full range of professions, clerical, manual, military plus probably a few the careers adviser daren't' mention.

Seriously I found my career (which most people have never heard of) with the help of a careers scheme, it's hard to find online what you aren't looking for.

I never found out careers advisers helpful - the one at school was a case of "Go to uni if you want, if not go get a job" and that was it. The one at my (public) sixth form was "Apply for Oxbridge, apply for Oxbridge!". Thought they were pretty useless tbh.

Glad it's not just me that sees the benefit!

foreverastudent - fair point but I think it is about sounding out your ideas and talking through pros and cons - this is hard to get from the internet but I think this is how they think they will get around axing the service.

huddspur - there is a private careers service serving independent schools and IME a lot of these kids have contacts who help them into careers. Many kids don't have that privilege!

You can do on-line tests that assess what you are good at and what you like. it told me that i should be ...... my current job !!!

Yanbu. Tis true a lot of information is available online BUT the work that Connexions and other careers companies do is not just about giving out information. Its about challenging choices and helping young people (or here in Scotland people of all ages) make well informed decisions for themselves.

Gone are the days of telling a young person what they should do or are capable of achieving (thank goodness!!!)

PS - you can also support this FB group if you feel strongly about it - CREATE: UK wide Campaign for Careers.

I think connexions is really vital as well. But anyone who voted tory shouldn't be at all surprised at this. Their dogma is that state infrastructure is to be downgraded (where it can't be got rid of altogether). It's what they are all about, to the core. It's sad, but deeply not surprising.

Unfortunately, Connexions was a classic 1997-2010 of a good idea getting out of hand. It had spectacular data sharing problems.

See page 21 of the FIPR report

SirBoob- sounds like my father's career's advice... "Have you thought of doing law at Oxford boy?"

"No sir."

"Thank you, you may go now"

Same kind of schoool as yours... but 60 years earlier

Shocking.

I'm hoping the careers advice is better than when I was at school, my dad came along to mine and the answer to all his and my questions were " sorry I'm not able to answer that" , she wasn't allowed to recommend courses for certain jobs, wasn't allowed to advise me on whether (for what I was interested in) I should go to college, 6th form etc!!! My poor dad had to take half a day off work for nothing.... if the system hasn't improved then surely our children wont be losing out. Then again I was at school a long long long time ago so it probably has

Yes, it's important, but it needs to be from people who know something about the careers they are recommending. I'm a journalist and hear all the time of teachers who tell children to do arts A-levels. Which is fine but not essential - you will stand out more if you understand science. Huge shortage of journalists who grasp science and plenty of jobs for those that do. Obviously you need a good standard of written and verbal English as well but if you have that, you don't need English A-level.

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