And after the high school, what? selectivity and college are the words that automatically come to mind. But the reality is that they are not the only option. Although according to which schools and institutes they do seem so if one looks at the orientation they give to their 2nd year high school students. And it is that the orientation is still the pending subject of education systemand also of the families. The Department of Education has on the table, as a task for this legislature, the preparation of a orientation decree.
It is common for families to ask about the grades that center has in selectivity when choosing a school, and perhaps it would be more useful to ask about how they guide students and how they help them choose. “Families see orientation as something distant and it is not given the importance it deserves. Then, in high school they pull their hair out because they see their lost children and they regret that they wish the school had guided the boys better”, analyze Juan Jose Juarezsenior project manager of the Bertelsmann Foundationentity that is dedicated to accompanying educational centers that want to improve this guiding work.
He also points to schools: “They do not perceive the consequences of poor orientation because the students have already left the center. They do not have direct incentives to improve. But if, for example, they knew that a third of their students drop out of post-secondary education , they would still see that they have done something wrong”.
And it is that the mistake is to think that orientation can be done in high school and based exclusively on several talks and a visit to some fair such as Saló de l’Ensenyament. “Orientation is a continuous process which should start at 1st year of ESO to prepare for the transition years, which are 4th year of ESO and 2nd year of high school. You can’t start the process in those courses,” Juarez stresses.
The Effects of Surface Orientation
The ‘last minute’ orientation causes, points out this expert, that centers and students focus on looking for precise information such as the procedures, the court notes or the brochures with the offer of degrees. “It is a superficial orientation. Students end up choosing by the name of the career, by the price of the degree or the location of the university. They do not delve into the curriculum, in the content of that degree, and that marks the terrain of play”. The consequences of this lack of deep and calm gaze, he adds, is university dropout. “According to latest data from the Ministry of Universities, 20.8% of students drop out of university and 12.4% change degrees. This means that there are 33.2% of students who made the wrong choice,” she adds.
Calm orientation should work, points out the Bertelsmann director, who is the student, what is he good at, what talents does he have, what is difficult for him, what does he achieve easily, the self-knowledge, definitely. “They come to high school green because they haven’t worked on all this.” Knowing professional experiences and analyzing the academic structure of the studies would be the other mainstays of this ideal training.
Worse in VET
And the situation is worse in orientation towards Vocational Training. Here are added outdated stereotypes and the lack of knowledge of the counselors. “The counselors are lost with FP. They come from the university and do not have a deep knowledge of what FP is today. They have a hard time recommending what they do not know. There is no guidance process there”. And he concludes that “the majority of students reach the higher cycles by chance.”
Aware of this gap, Educació is training directors and tutors of the 2nd year of high school, as well as guidance counselors, who are being given tools to guide them on VET. “The objective of the Department is to continue advancing on the path of promoting FP”, they have indicated from the ‘conselleria’.
Miquel Tarazonavocational training coordinator Joan d’Àustria Institute of Barcelona, confirms that the student who reaches a higher level training cycle usually finds out information outside his educational center. “They get information through websites or forums and arrive with a clear idea of what they want to study.” In this institute they have detected that for about three years there has been a progressive increase in higher grade students from Baccalaureate. “There is an increase in the prestige of the cycles. The Administration has done an empowerment job and that is bearing fruit,” says Tarazona. What is still missing, she believes, is to give greater visibility to all the professions offered by FP. “It is missing to show the amount of options that exist”.
Among its higher education students, in addition to students from intermediate and high school, there is also a growing percentage of university students who have either dropped out of their degree or have already finished it and want to expand their possibilities. Job opportunities are also a plus. “There is a great speed of labor insertion”, confirms Tarazona. By second grade, many of the students already have jobs or offers. At this institute, which specializes in computer science, recent higher degree graduates who enter the labor market do so with starting salaries of between 24,000 and 30,000 euros gross per year.
Breaking barriers
The Joan d’Àustria is a center that teaches ESO, baccalaureate and FP. This means that he takes great care in guiding his students and presents them with a wide range of options. For two years, moreover, this center has participated in the X-celence program of the Bertelsmann Foundation that seeks to improve that orientation. “The idea is to link students from ESO to Baccalaureate so that they have a more adjusted vision of their options from the personal motivation of the profession”, explains the center counselor, Nerea Guerendiain. This project has led them to involve all the teaching staff in guidance “so that as far as possible they relate their subjects to professions”. It is therefore an orientation from the classroom, which is added to the orientation from the tutorial.
Related news
Guerendiain underlines the change that has taken place in the educational system in recent years. “Before it was said ‘the one that is valid for Baccalaureate, and the one that is not for FP’. Those were barriers. Now there are different paths for everyone. It is about breaking down barriers and creating new paths that allow no student to be left hanging, to find their way and that everyone is trained”, he stresses, emphasizing that it is important to influence families. “There’s a broadcast job to do, let them see all the options,” he says.
In the Miquel Biada Institute of Mataró They also perceive this increase in Baccalaureate students who opt for a higher vocational training cycle. “VET is undergoing a radical change, a very important revaluation, with a very wide offer. We already see it in the 4th year of ESO, where more and more students are choosing a cycle,” explains the director, Theresa Commas. In this center, which teaches ESO, Bachillerato and FP, for a couple of years they have had two counselors who are exclusively dedicated to Bachillerato and FP subjects. The orientation is completed through tutorials and workshops organized by each department of the center and that include teacher conferences and student testimonials. In addition, they receive requests from other centers to give talks about the cycles. Comas also sees clearly that “personalized orientation is missing”. “It is done, but we have to focus more on it,” he points out.