How can you help your child / children with Careers Education, Information, Advice and Guidance?

The decisions young people make from an early stage at school can have a big impact on their future career choices and happiness. As parents you have a vital role to play in this career journey. As parents, your children will look to you for advice and guidance, even if they don’t like to admit it!

As a parent, you have more influence over your child's career thinking than you might realise. Learn about some easy, practical steps to have great conversations. When it comes to your teenager’s future, you might feel like you’re competing with social media, their friends, and the general chaos of adolescence for airtime. But research consistently shows that parents are one of the single biggest influences on how young people think about careers and further study. That’s a remarkable amount of sway that you may not know you even had, so it’s worth having it mind when you make statements or have conversations with your teens. The good news is, you don’t need to have all the answers, it’s enough just to stay curious alongside them. You can help them to research different careers or find out skills and qualifications needed to do certain jobs. You can be a positive influence on your child's choices.  

How you can you support your child’s career choices?

To help your child with career planning, it's important you:

• Remember that a career is the lifelong journey and not necessarily a job for life.
• Listen to your child, don’t judge and discuss their options.
• Be open to ideas and encourage them to explore all of their options
• Keep in mind that your child’s choices and decisions should be based on their aspirations and abilities, not on what you think they should do.
• Remember that not everyone has a clear idea what they want to do so your child's career ideas may change as they get older.
• Avoid inadvertently falling into, is projecting your own career experiences — or fears — onto your children. The job market your teenager will enter looks very different from the one you navigated.
• Impartial information, advice and guidance is available for the Careers Advisor at college for both students and parents. 
• It is more important to understand individual skills and qualities and how they could relate to a breadth of job roles, than for your child to have a firm job title in mind.

How can you help your child’s future?

To help your child to think about different choices, you can encourage them to:

• Talk about their career ideas and future plans and help them to consider the pros and cons of various options.
• Research various careers.
• Know about the breadth of options available in education, employment and training.
• Discuss ideas and options with teachers or the careers advisers at college.
• Find out about training, college, and university entrance requirements as well as what is needed for jobs they are interested in.
• Develop their skills by taking part in clubs and activities, both within and outside of school - this will help them stand-out when they are applying for courses or jobs.
• Find out about the world of work through work experience and extra-curricular activities by talking to relatives and family friends about the kinds of work they do.
• Go to careers events organised by the college.

Important careers now and in the future. 

To make a successful career choice, you and your child it can help to know current and future employment opportunities and local demand for specific skills.  See Future Trends & Labour Market Information to explore this insight.

A Guide to the Different Qualifications

The qualifications available to students have changed significantly in recent times. There are many qualifications available to suit students who have different ways of learning.  Further and more detailed information can be found on the Options Post 16 and Options Post 18 web pages.

Further Support. 

Should you have any queries or require assistance with how best to support your child with careers guidance, please email office@arthurmellows.org or telephone 01733 252235 and ask for Mrs Clarke.