Moving on from School: challenges for deaf pupils, their families and professionals
Presented on Wednesday 28 September 2005
School-leaving - a time for active decision-making
Cathy Howieson
Centre for Educational Sociology
University of Edinburgh
- Changing context of school-leaving and young people's transitions
- Trends in attitudes to decision-making and careers guidance
- Government promotion of an enterprise culture
- What are the implications for deaf students?
Young people's transitions
- Decision-making: within wider process of transition from initial education to adult working life
- Enormous changes in recent decades:
- longer, more complex and multi-stage transitions
- wider options and greater “choice”
- greater uncertainty and risk
- In late 70s/early 80s, norm for most young people to leave school at the end of the compulsory stage and enter employment
- Norm now to stay on at school (around 70%)
- Increase in participation in HE (50% approx)
Percentage of under 21 year olds entering HE 1983-84 to 2003-04
Active decision-making and choice
- Policies to give young people more responsibility and "ownership" of own career choices
- Idea of career decision-making as on-going process and need to develop career management skills
- Move away from young people as passive recipients of careers information and guidance eg end of "blanket interviewing"
- Careers Scotland's strategic aim: "equip individuals with the skills to plan their career throughout their working lives"
- Also related to idea of "consumers" in an education and employment "market"
Enterprise in education
- Government emphasis on development of enterprising attitudes, skills and behaviour
- Key benefits of "Enterprise in Education" for young people include:
- confidence
- self-esteem
- self-motivation
- willingness to take risks
- determination to succeed
- self-reliance
- self-management
- using initiative
- Careers education and work experience now incorporated under "Enterprise in Education"
- Ambitious, Excellent Schools/a Curriculum for Excellence (3-18)
- confident individuals
- more out-of-school hours opportunities including 1 residential experience for every pupil
Work experience and part-time jobs
What pupils thought they had learned from Education for Work provision (WE)
Work experience and part-time jobs
What young people thought they had gained from part-time work
- Parents: 83% of young people should have a part-time job
- Students with a disability: less likely to have had a part-time job (S6: 31% vs 17% never)
Common issues
- Complexity and range of potential options
- Levels of confidence, maturity and ability to access information and services or act as a consumer
- Ability of parents/carers (and others) to support and advise given rapidly changing environment
- Message: be enterprising and risk failure but
o competitive environment and pressure to succeed (eg; HE)
o schools removing risk (fear of accidents, litigation) - Changes to the guidance system
- Changes to the Careers Service