to think a decent schools careers advisory service or educated parents is the only way to get a career?

[chocolatecremeegg]

I have an OK job which has taken me a long time to get, had to work my way up literally from the bottom. I can't help wondering though, whether if I'd had a good careers advisor/teacher at school I could have achieved my real potential. I wanted to be a social worker but was told this would be to stressful and advised to become a secretary. Nothing against being a secretary but I was getting really good grades, was young and enthusiastic and thought I could be "more". Unfortunately my mum, a single parent, was to busy holding down 2 jobs to raise me and my sisters so obviously didn't have a lot of time or experience to encourage me to broaden my horizons. I just wish a careers advisor/teacher had said to us all at school "why don't you think about being an optician, dentist, accountant, doctor etc etc" and this is how you do it. What makes people at a young age know for e.g they want to be a dentist? When I look at my very high achieving colleagues, many of them seem to come from very well off backgrounds and went to excellent schools. What I'm trying to say really is this: If your come from a background where no-one in your family has ever had a "professional" job or vocation and you go to a crappy school with no careers guidance, do you ever stand a chance of getting into professions like medicine or law? I feel so sad sometimes because I know if someone had sat me down and told me that it was possible for someone like me to think of e.g being a vet I know I would have thought seriously about it and my whole life could have been different.

yanbu. My careers service was poor. I wanted to do a job using languages. (1983). i was told that there were very few jobs available for interpreters. Working in a bank would be better. or this cascade program says you would be good as a musical instrument designer. oh and by the way 'I remember your sister she wanted to do something strange too..' (she wanted to be a singer or actress). I think educated parents / or intelligent (not everybody who could do a degree does) parents are often representative of what can be achieved.

YANBU - I think career advisory services are hugely undervalued and underfunded in this country.

You can't choose your parents BUT whatever you didn't achieve as a child, you can always go back and re-do as an adult, when you're in control.

It's no good feeling sorry for yourself because you're parents were inadequate, you had a crap teacher, you fell in with a bad crowd, got pregnant, blah de blah, - just do whatever you can to make things right and move on. After all, once you're an adult, you're in control of your own destiny.

(not sorry you feel sorry for yourself, just mean all of us really)

What exactly is stopping you from achieving your childhood dream of wanting to be a social worker?

My school was the same - and there was a real sexist thing going on as well. Which was odd, as it was a girls' school. I went to see my careers adviser and told her I wanted to be a barrister. She said very few women were barristers, and to think about being a solicitor. Then she got her little book out and said, actually, there aren't that many women solicitors either, have you considered being a legal secretary?

Not that I'm any of those things now, I must admit...

What's stopping me now is my huge mortgage, pregnancy and a basic lack of cash. I've looked into courses but cannot afford the fees. Plus, you need to have a lot of spare time to attend training placements etc and at the moment I have to work full-time to keep a roof over our heads. I just wish when I was young, free and single I'd known all my options. The only thing i can do is make sure in the future my children have all the opportunities I didn't.

chocolatecremeegg, I think you need to tell yourself that your present situation is only a short phase of your life- though I'm sure it doesn't feel like it now. Once your children are old enough to be independent, you will still have many years of active life, and it is getting increasingly common for people to change career mid-stream; relatively few people stay in the same job all their lives. And it is very common for women to rethink their career choices post-children.

It is understandable that you feel cheated, you do have reason for feeling that way, but it doesn't necessarily have to be forever.

chocolatecremeegg totally agree.

In some sections of society and the schools in certain areas expectations are very low even if the students are very bright.

While for children born into privilege the options of fantastically well renumerated careers are there for the taking, even if they are pretty thick.

The old boys network is still alive and well and a lot of top jobs go to those "in the know". Plus children with private educations for example assume that they will walk into well paid jobs and somehow they do. I have met them and somehow being as thick as two short planks doesn't seem to present any problem for stratospheric career success.

While the height of aspiration for the very talented person from a deprived background is totally different, the bar is set so much lower.

It is a real and terrible shame.

I agree with you.

At my awful school our careers adviser lined us up into groups.

Group 1 - Would go onto have salaried jobs
Group2 - Would be blue collar workers and earn a wage
Group 3 - Would be teenage mothers
Group 4 - Would end up in prison

With guidance like that I'm not surprised that a large proportion ended up in groups 3 and 4.

Hmm, I'm a Careers Advisor..
when I was training, most of the people who did my course, or got into the field because of the crap careers advice they were given.
I grew up in a small town in Canada and I got NONE!!!

I believe the profession is changing. We are generally very well trained, and I for one want to give the best service I can to each student I see.

The thing is, we cannot tell people what they should and should not do. I believe that everyone can achieve whatever they set out to achieve, but you can't make them go to uni etc.

Unfortunately, some people just have to grow up a little/get some life experience before they discover their path.

foreveroptimistic!
and

yes I agree with you. You leave school not knowing much about different professions/fields of work and routes in. I was told to study history or become a lawyer and I did both, not really knowing what else to do with myself.

I think I would have been good designing material/wallpaper or something in that line tbh

I don't know many people who left school with plans to do something particularly unusual. I knew one guy who planned on becoming a forester and I was wondering how he got that idea (no forests where we lived). Now I think it was a great idea and wonder how that came about - and how it worked out.

You can do a social work course while you work for the local authority in an unqualified capacity. Don't know if this would be realistic financially for you though as not sure how the pay would compare to whatever you do now.

I don't think careers guidance took much interest in anyone who was going on to do A levels at my school. I agree that raising aspirations for able kids who come from less well off backgrounds is hugely important.

I hope you can retrain at some point, if social work is still your dream. We could certianly use some more committed enthusistic social workers.

purpleduck if there is no real career advising going on at school, what would you advise dp to do to help their dc find the right field?

What about those people whose educated parents decided for them that X was their career path, and who now hate the job / are not very good at it, etc?

I know at least one or two people in that camp. Thankfully not me - I always knew what I wanted to be, which is just as well as our careers advisor was an old bat who had not a clue in hell

There is alot of careers advising going on, but now it focusses on exploration -what does the student like to do, where would they like to be etc.Formal Careers Advice starts at Y9 now.

I personally believe that getting as much experience - doing different things is the way to go ie) different kinds of activities, clubs etc.

Yes.
When I think about it, one problem is that, if you not a from a mc, perhaps make that very-mc background, you just don't get to SEE the range of options there are in the world of work/further education.

Reproducing that immersion in a culture where adults have chosen from a range of careers and have often gone on to study in a range of further education options is ... wow ... a problem.

Schools have to stretch themselves so thin, to cover such a range of possible aspirations (or lack of aspirations.

For you, now, maybe the issue is different - what do you want to do with the rest of your life?

Use this time to think, look around and plan.

The Open University is an amazing resource and you have one great thing, no, you have two; you have time and what you are feeling now is the beginnings of an awareness that you want more from your life.

Accept you're going to have to go slowly, that it's going to be hard, you have major obstacles. But plan. Good luck.

My parents are liberal lefties. My first school was our local school but primarily served a very deprived area of town. Lots of our neighbours sent their kids to a different primary school with a better catchment. My parents opted for local. I was the only child in my class who didn't get free school meals.

I only went there 5-8 (we moved) but I remember in particular one lesson in P2 when we were asked what we wanted to do when we grew up. It came as something of a revelation to my sensitive 6 year old soul to realise that most of my classmates didn't have a clue what a university was, let alone that they might go to one. I meanwhile was going to be a dentist (I'm not!).

My sister (a student) currently works for a project which goes out into schools in teh area around her university talking about being a student, how to do it, and the benefits, downsides and costs involved. For many of the kids the biggest obstacles sadly are their parents who just don't see the point.

I think it is sad that the current generation of children aren't being encouraged to better themselves through education. 2 generations ago the woman in my family left school at 14 and went into domestic service. In my generation we have a PhD, a doctor, a lawyer and a trainee teacher. All but one of us went to Uni.

I think it's not the careers service that needs to change but parental attitudes.

When I was at school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, I thought I wanted to work with children, so got pushed onto a caring course instead of the GSCE retakes I wanted to do, then went on to do a GNVQ Advance as I has social work in mind, this was the only thing I could think off that I wanted to do. I finished the course then to do voluntary work to gain experience, applied to uni - failed due to lack of experience then 2nd year of voluntary work was unsure of what I really wanted so got into office work. I am now 31 and have been a stay at home mum for 5 years and now at a point where I am thinking about what to do.. still unsure to be honest.. Still want to help people but not sure what doing.
What I am trying to say is even if we were given great careers advice at 15 do we really know what we want to do? How many people have ended up doing what they wanted to do at 15 years of age?

ok I work in Careers Guidance and never ever ever tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do. Our job is to help young people and adults make well informed decisions based on knowing themselves. And please please please if you have teenagers persuade them out of being a hairdresser or a joiner. If I hear one more time my mum/dad/dog thinks it will give me a trade and good prospects I will weep......

LOL Loflo

This is really interesting.

I could

I think you are dwelling on negative thoughts too much, egg.

I had rubbish schools career advice. Garbage. My parents did not go to excellent schools nor to university. I did alright with getting a career, I suppose.

You are right that both help but there are always opportunities to improve your lot, I think.

I don't remember getting much career advice at school, and I went to a very good school. I just remember my English Lit teacher telling me not to become a doctor if I was thinking it would be like on ER (all hot doctors and steamy affairs!) She basically said, don't worry about what you choose to study at university (assuming we'd all go), just pick something that you will enjoy and everything will fall into place...

So I did a languages degree, and nothing really jumped out as an obvious career path, so I worked as a TA, whilst having my children, and now dd2 is 21 months old, I am on the last legs of my PGCE (teacher training), but I am pregnant again, so will not be taking up a teaching post immediately.

Neither of my parents had 'careers', only jobs. I've funded myself through university both times- it's not easy, but if you have a goal, anything is possible.

I'm not sure if my careers' advice was useful in any way, so- I'm not sure if YABU or YANBU!!

YANBU.

Careers advice was(is?) very narrow, focussing on what you might like to do. There is no talk of what your lifestyle aspirations are and how your job needs to fit this. Are you willing to work all hours to get the top money? Are you willing to get into debt early in life to fund studies? Would you want to do study whilst working? Willing to travel? Do you need something flexible to fit around family? etc etc

My own careers advice was appalling and I wish someone had told me which jobs are well paid for not a lot of effort. I'm not going to say what jobs I think they are as I'll just offend people! My own parents are not from a background where they could have pointed this out. Careers advisors seem to have limited real experience.

For what it's worth my sister is a careers advisor but she seems to do youth work with people with very difficult backgrounds rather than careers advice. If there's limited resources I think I'd rather she do that then tell some 14 year old they can be a secretary, a teacher or join the army.

I don't see how we can really say that the current generation isn't being encouraged to improve itself through education when there are targets for 50% to go to university, plus departments and policies that activley encourage people with no uni history to apply and get in.