Start your job search at school

Press, 22 October 1986, Page 17

Start your job search at school

By

MARGARET BAKER

What you want to do when you grow up isn’t quite so cut and dried these days. Firstly, there just mightn’t be any of those jobs available, or the courses at polytech or university have limited entry and competition for places is fierce, or you don’t have the right qualifications for the course, or you don’t have the right contacts for the job... and so on. Job searching can be a long, slow process: More than 4640 school leavers were registered as unemployed in December last year, and the job market is even tighter this year. So it pays to know where to go for help, how to help yourself, and how to face the situation. The best place to start is school. Most schools have vocational guidance counsellors, transition teachers, and courses for pupils looking for work or deciding on careers. These courses may come under the general “life-skills” title, but as Burnside High School’s full-time transition teacher, Ruth Moorhouse, says, the most valuable skills to develop are personal ones — confidence, adaptability, tolerance, and self-respect. "No-one can guarantee a job. The aim of the transition programmes is really to make young people independent — job seeking is often just a small part of it all.” Schools are responding to the problem of students wanting to leave for work that doesn’t exist in the community by offering alternative programmes for reluctant returners, and courses that help provide job and living skills.

Burnside High has two sixth form certificate * classes of eight hours a week, designed to teach community skills, a class where pupils can elect to spend time looking for a job or gaining work experience, and a fifth form life-skills programme. Last year 57 pupils started in the job seeking class. Only two did not find work. The school, like many others, also runs confidence, leadership, and interview courses when the need arises. It has a large work exploration programme in which 400 students spend a week each year working in chosen areas. “So far this year the job searching hasn’t been too bad. The ones who are really at risk are the early leavers, the ones who are 15 and don’t have school cert.,” says Ruth. Her “monitor” for the job market, however, has not shown healthy signs lately, with only about half the number of employers ringing the school with job offers, compared with last year. “And often they demand quite unreasonable qualifications — such as wanting a seventh former for general office duties when there are a number of fifth or sixth formers more suited to the job.” As for broadening the scope of jobs sought by school leavers, Ruth maintains most teachers do their best to get them

interested in non-tradi-tional jobs. “But mostly pupils are very traditional in their preferences. It’s very hard to get young women interested in technical studies — and by the time they reach the sixth form they often don’t have the right subjects.” Apart from this, the number of apprenticeships is falling, and openings in technical trades are becoming very hard to find.

“Their horizons really have to be broadened right from the third form.” Ruth’s personal view is that the aim of the skills courses is to make school a more rewarding place for the students.

“They are staying longer so we have to provide useful and interesting subjects.”