This morning, I spent a frustrating half an hour on the
telephone, trying to find out how a young man is supposed to go about getting
an apprenticeship in this lovely little country town. Dynamo is in Year 9 at
school and has an idea of what he wants to do after Year 10, but he’s worried
that he might need better marks. So, sensibly, he’s trying to find out now what
extra effort he may need to put in.
First I phoned the local TAFE College. They’re the ones that
run the apprenticeship training courses. No, they said, we don’t do career
advice. You need to phone this other place. So I phoned this other place. No,
they said, we don’t give career advice to school kids. We give it to those who
have left school and the unemployed.
‘Wouldn’t it be more effective to advise kids while they’re
still at school,’ I asked, ‘so that they can work towards the subjects they
need?’
There was a moment’s silence at the other end before, ‘Well,
yes, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of that. But if you want advice, you should
phone TAFE.’
So this afternoon, I asked a teacher at school. He’s not a
trained careers guidance officer; he's just a man who knows a lot more than these people who
are supposed to know. It’s annoying that something as simple as getting career
advice from the people who should know is so difficult. In a ‘Reader’s Digest’ (ie short and fast)
explanation, the teacher was able to tell me what course Dynamo would need to
do in Years 11 and 12 and what level he would best need to achieve. He now has
the framework for a plan.
The moral of the story? The obvious person to ask is not
necessarily the right person to ask!
2 comments:
When I was at high school there was a dude especially employed to sort this stuff out. Nobody ever went to see him and the school had to find stuff for him to do. They were simpler times though.
Yes, I remember the guidance officer at school, too - fairly useless, from memory. Ah, those were the days!
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