Careers:: TOPICS

Abstract

According to Geoffrey Holland, Director of the Manpower Services Commission, the time has come for major changes in the field of careers education and advice. School‐leavers, faced with a difficult and rapidly changing employment market, will no longer have to decide immediately which specific job to go for. Instead they will be able to choose between staying on in full‐time education or going out to learn. If the latter is chosen, young people will learn not one particular skill but a group. Twelve of these occupational training families, which group together activities with common ingredients, are identified in the MSC's Youth Training Scheme, which aims to provide places for 460,000 youngsters in its first year. This will alter profoundly what careers education does and what the Careers Service does, and require a radical re‐think of what careers information is produced and the way it is handled. It is a key change for parents and their children, because the choices that will face them in the future will be different; and it is important that they understand those choices and the consequences of them. In response, the MSC's Careers & Occupational Information Centre (COIC) would move away from information about narrow job areas and put the accent on choices, self‐help, and the consequences of options.

Citation

(1983), "Careers:: TOPICS", Education + Training, Vol. 25 No. 7, pp. 200-200. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb016993