Unemployment - a key concern for secondary school leavers
Victoria Seiketso Sethibe | Thursday April 6, 2017 16:43
Informed decisions call for deeper investigation on other services that can support your learning, as an individual initiative. Below are some of the key items to look out for, when choosing a tertiary institution for further studies (not in any particular order);
Does it have a strong link with the industry/work place?
Finding out about the rate of job placement of the recent alumni of any institution can give an indication of how effective the job placement programme of that institution is.
Some institutions make some impressive progress in assisting their students in making transition from being a student to being an employee, through experiential learning, and this can also help them to find jobs after graduation.
Does it have special accommodations for people with disabilities?
While some people are born with disabilities (in-born disabilities), others acquire them with time (acquired disabilities) due to poor safety and many other factors. If you are currently living with a disability, considering an educational institution that supports learners with your type of disability becomes an obvious driving force in your choice.
It can however, be easy to overlook the importance of disability support systems for those who are living without disabilities. It is therefore, important to ask yourself the ‘what if’ (and God forbid) question. There is usually at least that slight possibility that one could acquire a physical disability.
This therefore makes it important to investigate if an institution could continue supporting your learning or if that could be the end of your career should a physical disability be acquired. Contingency planning is what this is all about. Special support for people with disabilities is a sign that an educational institution supports equal opportunity in education.
Does it have a comprehensive counselling programme?
The transition from a secondary to a tertiary institution is a big one, and this calls for a robust counselling programme that can help learners adapt to rapidly changing environments plagued by uncertainty, while preventing dangerous, self-defeating habits. The mechanisms utilised by tertiary institutions to achieve this goal vary from one institution to the other, depending mainly on the available resources and the institution’s mission.
Some institutions’ counselling programmes have adopted a holistic approach that includes; individual and group mental health counselling, career counselling, additional learning support systems; such as those for learners with Special Education Needs, educational and psychological outreach.
Some institutions provide counselling within the strict confines of academics and exclude mental health services. Whether or not students are able to cope in an environment that lacks mental health support systems vary from one student to the other and this depends on the assistance they get from home as well as other off-campus psycho-social services.
Does it train students for occupations currently in high demand?
This year (2017) Botswana’s Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) released a Learner’s Guide in which 12 key sectors of the country’s economy have been outlined. An executive summary of the top occupations under each sector have also been highlighted.
The 12 identified sectors include (not in any particular order); tourism, health, agriculture, mining minerals water and energy resources, financial and business services, transport and logistics, education and training, information communications and technology (ICT), research innovation science and technology, creative industries, public and manufacturing sectors.
Be sure to catch up with some detailed updates of some of the outlined top occupations in some of this month’s columns. Please note that the words learners and students have been used inter-changeably. They mean the same thing in the context of this article.