The efforts with steerage counselors in Barbados to assist secondary school students put together for a career of their preference are hampered through several boundaries: President of the Barbados Association of Guidance Counsellors Margaret Grant. According to her, steering counselors were under remarkable strain because they have been “below the lecturers’ agenda” and have been consequently required to educate Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) to masses of students and provide counseling to the school population.
“As the counselor, you’ll take into account that we have the whole faculty to look after. Right now, three colleges have two counselors. In contrast, all of the different colleges have one counselor, sometimes to 900 or 1,000 youngsters,” Grant told the Workforce Preparation Skills workshop organized using the Ministry of Labour and Social Partnership Relations. Also, she stated efforts using the steering counselors to provide direct professional steering and academic profession planning offerings to fulfill students’ wishes have been being hampered through monetary constraints.
Grant additionally talked about that it becomes no longer in every case that the HFLE became being taught through instructors who had been skilled in this vicinity or who have been even inquisitive about coaching it. “There are some which might be skilled inside the machine, however regularly due to the fact within the secondary college device teachers are specialized in specific subject regions, and consequently you would possibly discover that the individuals who’re trained in Health and Family Life Education might not be the ones who’re in reality teaching the training,” she said.
While mentioning that most steering counselors had been educated as much as the Master’s Degree stage, Grant said she become assured in their ability. However, she stated that this did not eliminate the constraints being faced in helping younger humans choose a career direction. In setting ahead several pointers, the president pointed to the want for a completely-provided committed profession resource center and the development and implementation of a professional steering module for first to sixth form students across the college machine. “We must step out of the container and wherein we can see innovation, run with it. So a summertime camp in which children can come and hear approximately career planning and who they are, do a little self-evaluation, self cognizance, self law, all this stuff are necessary if we want to get our children sincerely equipped for the personnel,” she said.
Grant also wants to see a boom within the variety of college students involved inside the summer program between the then Ministry of Civil Service and the steering counselors’ enterprise, which allows secondary school college students to be assigned to a ministry or government branch paintings enjoy. She said the program commenced with five college students consistent with college; however, up to the remaining yr it changed into down to simplest college students per faculty. Rodney Grant, Consultant with the Barbados Association of Non-governmental Organisations (BANGO), said to bridge the distance between faculty leavers and the staff, it became important for students to study gentle abilities. This, he stated, might be finished thru a strategic partnership between the general public region and civil society and the non-public quarter. He also insisted that scholars have to study difficult areas and programs wherein they were interested.
