Teach the teacher, student and most of all the parents
It is just not only about educating students, but equally important is educating parents too when it comes to career guidance in Sri Lanka, an expert in the field Dr. Catherine Hughes has recommended.
From left: Anjana Kulasekara (Director - Operations, CareerMe), Sunil Hettiarachchi (Secretary of the Ministry of Education), Dr. Catherine Hughes (International Advisor, CareerMe) and Nandana Kanakaratne (Senior Career Advisor, CareerMe).
Australian career development consultant Dr. Hughes who was in town last week to offer a helping hand to new start-up CareerMe said that unlike in her country where decision-making was more in the hands of students, in Sri Lanka it would be wise to also take into account the impact parents had on their children’s future.
“In Australia children are more independent, and if there is a choice, he or she, is able to do what they want to do over and above what parents want even though parents are interested in their futures. But Sri Lanka will have to follow the model of India, where there is another dimension to career guidance, and takes into account the parental factor,” Dr. Hughes suggested.
A professional in the field of pointing school-leaving children in the right career path, Dr. Hughes made a first visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of careerme.lk which was inaugurated only last month. During her brief visit she met with officials of the Ministry of Education who are also keen in offering local students a more structured career pathway rather than leaving it up to chance and fate.
“Catherine has given us useful advice and our initial goal will be to educate both the student as well as the parents on career guidance and cap it off by building a data base so that no matter who the stakeholder is – student, parent or teacher – they can access this information,” offered Anjana Kulasekara, Career Me director, operations.
Dr. Hughes, who has more than 30 years of experience in career guidance, revealed that it will take a lot of hard work and determination to build up a data base. She has established her own website, growcareers, which gives Australian students a gold mine of information to act on before deciding which path to take.
“Grow Careers is a free website for all Australian school communities and for students from grade seven through to 12. The Sri Lanka team identified my website and made contact and I’m very glad to help them,” Dr. Hughes explained.
Students in Australia are more mindful of what they want to do because work-studies are now becoming a subject on the national curriculum. This helps raise awareness of how the world’s workplace is changing so that young employees can transfer skills to different occupations that may arise.
“The other aspect of work-studies helps students identify who they are and the opportunities that are out in the workplace, and help them implement decisions,” Dr. Hughes pointed out.
The local version, CareerMe, will follow a similar pathway by getting students to take a personality test and then plan the most-suited educational pathway. They will have a data base of educational courses as well as occupational pathways. In Australia, a similar data base was first started in 1960 and has been built on every year. Sri Lanka is starting from scratch.
“We don’t know what is coming. Technology is transforming the world so we have to prepare people to make choices time and time again. It is anticipated that jobs are going to become like gigs, short-term contracts. The days where you worked for one employer all your life is over,” Dr. Hughes predicted.
“The future employee has to be multi-skilled and adaptable. Life-long learning seems to be a must. Importantly we need to develop capacity of young people in schools to be able to understand who they are, understand the opportunities out there as well as understand how the world marketplace is changing and how they can best prepare themselves,” Dr. Hughes said.
Anjana added: “This is new to Sri Lanka. But we are taking a leaf out of Australia and placing it within our cultural context because parents are a huge factor. It’s not just the child’s education but parental education is also important because it is the parent who will fund the student. We can give advice to a student but if the parent is not convinced the child cannot go ahead.”