VT Indigo

Supporting your son or daughter with the choices they will face whilst they are at school or college

You will know your child best of all. As a parent, there are many ways in which you are able to support your son or daughter as they progress through school or college.

This short section focuses on how you can help them with their career choices:

Check out if there are careers resources and information in the school/college – often in a careers room or the library – and encourage them to use these from Year 9 (3rd year) onwards. There will, for example, be books describing what a very wide range of careers actually involve and their entry requirements. There will also be help with choosing subjects to study, what these involve and information on higher education.

Encourage them to see that careers lessons have relevance to their future. These may be stand alone lessons or part of a broader PSE (personal and social education) provision by their school.

Help them to understand that their subject choices are important. Subjects which they enjoy and are good at are important but they also need to consider which subjects they may require to gain entry later on to certain courses and careers. Taking an appropriate spread of subjects from the start can save difficult and expensive adjustments in the future.

Encourage them to take full advantage of careers interviews with a careers adviser who visits the school. To benefit from this, they do not need to know what they want to do in the future, but it helps to have thought a little about some of the issues involved and to have used the careers library beforehand.

In Years 10, 11 and 12 (4 th, 5 th, 6 th years) encourage them to use interactive software such as “ Odyssey” or “ Pathfinder + HE” (link to product pages of VTCP website for Odyssey and Pathfinder section of Indigo website for Pathfinder HE) which is in the school. These will make career and degree course suggestions based on on-screen questions they are asked. Again, it would be helpful to gain a printout from this before their careers interview.

Encourage them to take full advantage of any careers or higher education fairs, and work experience or “shadowing” opportunities. Support them in making their own individual appointments, during holiday time, with people in careers which appeal so they can discuss what is involved in their work.

Consider the possibility of accessing objective psychometric profiling for your son or daughter. This can measure the level of their different abilities, one against the other, as well as taking certain aspects of personality and their interests into account. When explained by a qualified guidance counsellor, such impartial, objective information can help your son or daughter to choose subjects, courses and careers which use their relative strengths.

A general approach supporting your son or daughter in the future is really important – here are some tips:

Helping them to be prepared for change in their future working lives by developing awareness that they are likely to experience:

career change
change of employer
the need to develop new skills and gain new qualifications throughout their working life
change in their style of working between, for example, full-time, part-time, contract based, project based, self employment
change in geographical location of their work

Helping them to be aware of and recognise the skills they are developing both in and out of school, and the grounding and flexibility these can give. Skills such as verbal and written communication, numeracy, IT skills, team working, self reliance and problem solving can be developed through a variety of activities and study, are highly rated by employers, and will give confidence to cope with the changing world of work.