School Careers Advisers

Te Ao Hou, March 1966, Page 7

School Careers Advisers There are professional services available to all school-leavers, and not one adolescent need start his or her working life without first talking over plans and getting the best of advice. Attention has recently been drawn in ‘Te Ao Hou’ to the work of vocational guidance officers, and these people are of course the real experts, carefully selected and trained for their highly specialised work. However country folk are at a disadvantage in utilising this professional service because they must wait for these officers to visit their districts, and then, because of the crowded timetable, they may miss out on an interview. Many of the pupils at our college are turned away at each visit of the vocational guidance officer, simply because there is not time enough to see them all. Of course there is a list of priorities, so that the more urgent cases are seen first. This would be a very serious state of affairs were it not for the fact that this school, like most large secondary schools in New Zealand, has a careers adviser on the staff who sees to it that pupils are taking the right courses, looks after their day-to-day problems, supplies them with careers information, and generally prepares pupils before they meet the vocational guidance officers. Many parents and pupils are unaware of the existence of careers advisers so I thought I would write about my own work as a careers adviser in a remote country college with a large Maori roll, to bring this service to the attention of readers of ‘Te Ao Hou’. I shall be discussing mainly country experiences and country problems but I hope other readers may find something of interest also.