Vocational Guidance.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 458, 20 May 1932, Page 6

Vocational Guidance.

to prevent round pegs being fitted into square holes have been carried out by the Birmingham Education Committee, who are anxious to fit young people leaving school for jobs to which they are suited. A number of children about to leave school ■were divided into two groups. The children in one of these groups were given guidance about vocations at employment conferences. The children in the other group were given guidance on lines indicated by the results of a series of vocational tests-, and also in view of their social inclinations, health and temperaments. “ Performance ability,” manual dexterity, mechanical ability, and dressmaking ability, together with intelligence tests and tests of clerical ability, were used. Some of the children took the advice given to them about choice of jobs. Others, however, did not. Hence, when they became employees, there were four different groups. There were tested children in posts taken according to the advice they had been given; tested children in posts other than those they had been advised to take, and two corresponding groups of children who had not undergone tests. Then came the vital part of the experiment —watching the progress of the children in these four groups. The children who proved most successful were those who had undergone tests, and had then taken posts with advice based on the results of those tests. Children who had been tested and then had entered posts different in type from those they had been advised to take proved less satisfactory as employees. With regard to the two groups who did not undergo tests, no marked differentiation could be found. The superiority of the children who were in posts they had been advised to take was found to apply to both girls and boys, considered separately. Girls showed more stability than boys in all groups at the beginning of their careers. This superior stability on the part of girls was only maintained subsequently by those who, at the outset of their careers, had taken posts in accordance with the guidance given to them.