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The Daily PollDO YOU THINK your post-primary career guidance was useful?
Education Minister Richard Bruton has announced a review of career guidance in post-primary schools, further education and training centres and third-level institutions.
The review aims “to ensure that we are providing a high quality, relevant career guidance support service to all students” from post-primary level up to higher education.
So, did you find career guidance useful in deciding your career path?
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I was told by my guidance teacher that I’d never get anywhere without going to college. I wanted to join the military. I joined up because I had no interest in college. I just retired after 22 years in the navy. Now I’m an advanced paramedic.
Thanks for your guidance, Mr Teacher!
@Stephen Deegan: Well done. Wishing you all the best in the next stage of your life
@Stephen Deegan: Good for you and well done for following your own dream.
I think career guidance is not useful but it is more helpful to know what your best aptitude and qualities are so then you can make a more informed decision on what to do. Also it does not tie you down to a particular path.
@Stephen Deegan: University of life is best of all schools.
@Stephen Deegan: I was the exact same, I was told if I didnt do honours Irish I wouldnt be allowed in to the Army, 12 months later I was a soldier. Wasted 5 years of my life in the Army, left and went to college. Just got my second degree today.
It’s utterly absurd to think a 16/18 year old kid knows what they want to do for apparently their career life.
@Nollaig Elliot:
They won’t know exactly what they want to do but they will probably know the area that interests them most
@Nollaig Elliot: Very few actually know even in their early 20′s.
@Nollaig Elliot: Thoroughly agree. My oldest kid always wanted to be a Vet until she had to pick up large deposits of German Shepherd shite in the garden. Through the gagging and vomiting, I reminded her what it would be like sticking her arm up a cow’s hole. She’s doing languages now.
@Nollaig Elliot: For some perhaps. I knew what I wanted to do as a life career from the time I was 12 years old (radio communications and electronics) and pursued that all my working life with good success. For me, going to work was something to look forward to on a Monday morning. There was of course some challenging times and some unsavory people but overall it was great. I still have a great interest in my chosen subject and spend a lot of my time experimenting with various engineering technologies.
@John Hagin Meade:
Yes some kids know what they want to do. My son, aged 17, want to be a primary school teacher and no matter how much I suggest to him to keep an open mind and assess all other opportunities he has no interest in anything but becoming a primary school teacher.
@Nick Allen: then he didn’t need guidance councillors!
@Nollaig Elliot: Some might not but I knew I wanted to do accounting from the age of about 14 and 18 years later I’m extremely happy in my career having worked from then to get here.
The guidance should be to help them understand their interests, what they may want to do and steer them towards options that align with that. My career guidance didn’t give me any help because I knew more than them as I’d looked into so I go ignored. Others were told they wouldn’t get anywhere without going to college – they’ve turned into some of the most successful from school. They went into apprenticeships and excelled and built up their own business. No advice on these give to them.
She told me I’d make a great accountant. I was failing ordinary maths at the time. I had to question if she had the right student file open, she doublechecked and realised she hadn’t. Still pushed the idea of becoming an accountant though.
@Shannon Mcg: That’s brilliant :D
I was advised to do business and Chinese in university because it was very popular. This was despite me not doing any business subjects for my leaving cert and being weak with languages.
@Seán J. Troy:
And did you do it?
@Nick Allen: No, I became a geologist instead. I did eventually learn French though so I could work in west Africa.
@Seán J. Troy: If you managed French you can manage Chinese as well
@cortisola: French is relatively easy. Chinese is a completely different beast. Different alphabet and completely different phonology. Intonation and pitch can change the meaning of a word. Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian and other similar languages are more difficult to learn from English than any other.
French is basically English but more pretentious and with a few accents thrown in.
@Seán J. Troy: goodman Sean ! Our school counselor was useless when she ever came in even
Misinformed, misleading and misguided advice given to all my children, now very successful adults who ignored their career guidance advice.
I was told in 1991 that finding work in a factory would be the best for me.. I hadn’t a chance of going to college because my parents were small farmers and we just didn’t have the money to be honest, I think a lot of teachers from that generation focused on the students that had money behind them and were going to go to college, they worked harder and focused on those students more, I found it to be like that in my experience but then maybe it just felt that way because if you weren’t focused on college then you felt kinda lost… I remember being terrified when the leaving cert was over… had no direction…
The majority of career guidance teachers are failed teachers who can’t get jobs as teachers and compete the course in guidance. A lot of guidance teachers get it very cushy. When asked what they do they pull the confidentially card. Time after time it has been proved that career guidance teachers are on a junket and use the kids as an excuse to make their jobs more important. The world was going to fall apart when their hours got cut the last time. And no it didn’t. The vast majority of guidance is needed only needed at certain times of the year. Subject choices, CAO, UCAS etc. A lot of their work is pastoral care which the good teachers do and don’t cry how good they are. The guidance teachers will now use excuses to defend their cushy jobs. Excuses begins. DON’T USE THE KIDS AS PAWNS.
The only career advice I got from the Christian brothers was that I would never be successful and the only chance I had was to get the Mail boat to England which I did and never looked back
@Chris Tyrrell: I wish someone would have advised me to emigrate
When I was in 6th year I got a place in mechanical engineering in NIHE, as it was then called, in Limerick. The careers guidance teacher said ‘don’t go there, it will soon close’. I didn’t go there. It’s now University of Limerick and many years later I graduated with a degree from there.
@John Considine:
NIHE in Dub and Limerick always had a great reputation, very surprising to hear a teacher say it won’t last
My career guidance teacher told one student she couldn’t be an optician because she wore glasses. She actually didn’t go for it on that advice. The cg teachers were basically teachers of other subjects who didn’t really have a clue and just got landed with the class. Coin toss most likely!
My Career Guidance Teacher’s advice to everyone was to aim for the course with the highest points, unless she thought you couldn’t afford to go to college or weren’t from a family that was middle-class enough.
Sadly, a lot of teachers seem to be people who could not get ahead in the job or business of the subject they teach, so they became teachers for the guaranteed salary. There are great teachers that seem born to teach but several are miserable and discouraging with a hidden agenda to make pupils feel like losers or make decisions that will make them miserable too. Job fairs are better, a sort of market place where you meet people actually doing different jobs. Or if you have a passion for something, learn how to go into business with it.
@WoodlandBard: Totally agree with your comment, my eldest’s career guidance teacher was a complete waste of space, told my son to avoid studying design as there were no decent jobs and poor pay – a total ignoramus, thankfully he ignored him and has a degree in graphic design and also multimedia, he is now head of a design team working for a large software developer on over 120k a year. My youngest also ignored the same guidance counselor and went to job fairs he too has just graduated with a degree in multimedia and design and landed a decent well paid job within a month of graduating.
I was told to be a mechanic or a nun. I know someone else in my class who got a lighthouse keeper…
What subject is your favorite?
Business – Do Commerce
A Language – Do Business with said Language
Maths – Do Engineering
Chemistry/ Biology/ Physics – Do Science
I Hate School – Join the Army
And if your a bit “…” but still want to educated yourself further do a PLC – simple.
@YouHaveGotToBeJoking: Excellent. Particularly option 5.
Unless you wanted to be a teacher or a nurse, our guidance counsellor was pretty much useless.
@Daphne: I think we had the same teacher!
@Daphne: If you wanted to work in the Bank mine was the one for you!
I’m not a guidance counsellor myself but I am a teacher and I know a few guidance counsellors. Not everyone would be suited to the job and some people are bad at their job, like in every profession.
I can only comment on what I have seen myself. The students I have taught view their guidance counsellor as an invaluable asset to the school. Apart from career guidance, there is a huge amount of counselling offered and for a lot of students having a safe space in school with someone advocating for them and listening to them is vitally important. I fully support a review of guidance counselling in our schools as long as the objective is to benefit students and not an excuse to cut guidance hours to reduce costs.
@Rachel Clare: They are few and far between I’m afraid. It was probably the career guidance counselor informed you that the students need so much personal counselling they tend to do that and then inform you that’s it confidential and they can’t say anything. Hmm… That explains everything. It’s so funny the don’t need any of this in primary school. Guidance counselor told us that they’d be so much difficulties and suicides amongst our young people when it was withdrawn the last time but it didn’t happen does that not tell you something. Hmm And no they didn’t do extra work. They don’t do that. 99.9%
@John Hartley: my guidance counsellor did some personal counselling…. in the way of telling my diagnosed anorexic friend that how she dealt with stress was to comfort eat, and how she should think of doing that because it is healthier.
In the way of telling me, who was bullied severely, that I was too old to be bullied at 15 and to get thicker skin.
How useful.
Focused completely on trying to get me to go to college , I always wanted to work with wood so I went and did an apprenticeship and love my job ………..most if the time
Pushing kids who have no interest into college into college is one the big reasons we have such high drop out levels in first yr .
@Curly Washburn: my son is in exactly the same position. Doing his LC, wants to do a carpentery apprenticeship. School pushing him away from that.. Pushing the college route but luckily he’s sticking to his guns. Absolutely no help with setting-up his apprenticeship whatsoever. He’s so frustrated he almost jacked it in before Xmas.
My career guidance in school was awful and lead me down a completely wrong path. After quiting a college course I hated I worked different jobs for a while before paying quite a lot of money for private career guidance. Best money I ever spent, I’m working in a good job getting educated making the quite a lot of money seem like the best investment I ever made.
She made us take aptitude tests and some of those survey type programs which asks preference questions to suggest a career and offered “advice” entirely based on those outcomes and without any sort of personal input. I think I wound up with something like “politician” which I wasn’t too impressed with.
As others have said it’s very difficult to know where you want to go with your life at 17 and maybe better advice would be to focus on the building blocks and let the destination take care of itself in time.
Finish school, go to college, go back to school, become a guidance counsellor (or a politician). No knowledge of the real world needed.
My career guidance councillor told e “you know more about this than I do” when I went seeking advice regarding subject choice for my leaving cert. the only good bit of advice I got was to have a back up plan, which is the career I ended up in!
There is 2 types of guidance personal guidance which can be contracted outside of the school. And career guidance which is only needed when choosing subjects for the leaving cert and choosing a career or college but the majority of these career guidance people has never left education and have never been in the real workplace and tell you that you would make a good ?? Every teacher should know their subject area for example a construction studies teacher should know what is needed to become an architect. Guidance teachers are full of self importance and serve what purpose. They do some good but do more damage than good.
I always had an interest in computers/IT. Guidance councilor told me that it was a niche market, and that it would never catch on. No IT classes in post-primary. Even now it’s not even a subject in school. Kids nowadays don’t even use a computer, too busy on consoles and tablets.
I thought guidence wasnt provided anymore. I remember my guidance was a mutiple choice apptitude test and that was it really. No talks from different guests from different areas or anything like that.
The system of employing guidance counselors in Ireland is all wrong. The counselor needs to be a teacher fist before training as a counselor. It is not the correct way to train a counselor. Guidance Counselors need to have experienced life, careers, jobs, hardship and be extremely open minded in order to do the job correctly. Having gone straight from school to college back into a school setting is by no means experiencing life. That system needs to change. There are so many counselors out there that would be perfect for schools but because they have not got a teaching degree they wont even be considered. My school guidance counselor wanted us to become teachers, or go to Maynooth University to study anything they did there. We had no real guidance. It was Useless!
Didn’t get a bit of career guidance from the schools I was in. Who knows where I could have ended up?!
I used ride a motorbike (fast) to school, career guidence guy told me I wouldn’t see my 21st birthday!! 32 yrs later I work oil rigs earn good money……..and still ride motorbikes, the guidence guy is divorced,on the dole, living in a bedsit and has to use public transport. I meet him now and then and have pint and a laugh.
When a national survey provides overwhelming support for what you’ve spent the last 2 years trying to address, a dull Monday morning in January just seems a hell of a lot brighter.
Career guidance needs to be supported by actual research and uniquely applicable to individual students rather than just generic occupational testing which owes more to its expediency than its usefulness.
Modern career guidance counsellors in schools unfortunately appear to be providing more of a counselling role rather than a more comprehensive career service.
I did an aptitude test with mine and she told me I would be good at engineering but I just got a job after school finished. Wish I’d listened to her now but it was very unusual for a girl to do engineering back then
Last year I did the leaving, my career guidance teacher was off or “busy” majority of the time, and when we did have class all we did was watch “inpirational” videos of people who had a lucky break.
I found that it was completely useless and that I had to go off and figure out without any help what I wanted to do. When they finally got around to the question of what will you do next year it was almost time for the leaving cert to begin and the only answer I and my friends got was; “oh thats brilliant! I wish you the best!”.
So that is my experience with career guidance, which was only last year and the teacher is still working there.
@Olivia: I’m sorry to hear you had that experience. However most schools have in excess of 400 students, some up to and over 1000. It can be hard for one sole guidance teacher to see every student. There literally are not enough hours in a year to for one teacher. Still, I hope you did well in the auld LC and are enjoying whatever you chose to do.
@Keithy McKeitherson: excess of 400 students sitting the leaving cert? Jesus that is a lot!
Seriously, guidance counsellors only need to work with 5th and 6th years for career guidance. 2 students a week for a half an hour isn’t much to ask for.
DBS told me to be a window dresser, post a two course in computer networking she must of though I would look good working in Brown Thomas
lol The last career guidance I spoke to at DBS after doing two years of computer networking told be to be a window dresser … do I look camp lol
Let them LOOSE
my guidance counselor in school was Fintan McNamara turns out works for the Landlord association of Ireland. Never did like him.
My Career guidance was “you should emigrate, there is nothing here for you.”
At least they were being honest.
Used it as a way of dossing of class.
Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach
Those who can’t teach, teach career guidance!
Mine was an utter joke – you should train to do the same job as one of your parents was the jest. Little advice on anything outside of the CAO forum so if you want to apply for courses outside of Ireland or the UK no joy or if you wanted to apply for courses at Higher Education colleges no joy. Thank f**k I already knew what I wanted to do
Having worked with a great many, some are amazing, like really amazing. I work with two women in particular who are not only on point, but kind and charismatic, and incredibly hard working. In my experience though, particularly the first secondary school I went to as a teenager, they were less than great, didn’t really know the breadth of things that students could progress to, however that could be school policy to be fair.
I was told by my guidance counsellor that I was not college material and should look for work in a factory. I paid no attention and now have a BA from Harvard College in the US.
Almost 20k views and a possible 1 positive comment about career guidance teachers. Hmm you can’t defend the indefensible. Guidance teachers are so full of self importance they like to make their job look so vital. Hello its not. Unfortunately that’s confidential and I am not at liberty to tell you that your job is not as important as you make it. Guidance was cut about 5 years ago and the only people telling you that there will be disaster after disaster was guess who…. The people trying to keep their cushy jobs. I hope this finally gets to the bottom of the guidance junket.
@John Hartley: to be fair, there is a distinct difference between career guidance and a guidance counsellor – the latter of which is very much needed. Without being in the sector, I guess it may be hard to be aware of the impact a lack of guidance has in a school. Students these days have a range of issues from anxiety, to dyslexia/dysphraxia, autism and aspergers to name but a few. Supports are needed for those students to prosper.
@Keithy McKeitherson: I agree whole heartily but career guidance & guidance counsellor are one of the same and that’s were the problem is Guidance people increase & magnify the issues most of the time it’s normal teenage stuff. kids with learning difficulties which many have & its on the increase the teachers need to step up to the mark and develop what is called pastoral care & classroom based learning support or differentiation which is the support that many kids need To be fair many teachers are stepping up We need the right people but don’t alway get them in teaching The interventions with regards to counseling would be more beneficial to the kids to be provided externally & probably cost effective. Strange that there is no in-house guidance provided in primary school of any shape.
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