The Ministry of Education and Training asked high schools to carry out career guidance curriculum since 2006, emphasizing the importance of career education.
Career guidance gives more information to parents and students about career opportunities, thus helping them choose the careers suitable to their ability, health and hobbies. Students can draw up long term plan to follow to obtain their goals. If they exactly know what study majors they would follow, they would be able to prepare themselves soon to get adapted to the new circumstances.
However, though recognizing the importance of career education, no school has paid appropriate attention to the work. In general, the career guidance hours are assigned to head teachers, or the teachers, who have few teaching hours. Therefore, no one spends time on preparing lesson plans for career guidance hours, once they have to spend too much time on other compulsory works.
A survey by the Vietnam Education Science Institute has found out that 70 percent of high school students do not receive career education.
Most students kept quiet when they were asked about the career education curriculum for 10th graders. No 11th grader could answer the question, saying that they would only decide what they would become when they finish the 12th grade.
A student surprised his teacher when asking what subjects he needs to learn more intensively to attend the university entrance exams, if he wants to become an officer in the banking and finance sector.
“What subjects are you keen on?” – the teacher asked the question. “I still don’t know,” the student replied.
The problem of many high school students now is that they do not know what they would study and what jobs they would take. A lot of students said the same thing that they would ask others or their parents to decide what to do next after finishing high school.
It’s quite a popular thing at high schools that students do not have adequate information about career opportunities. Meanwhile, the career guidance book compiled by the Ministry of Education and Training only provides basic information and mentions the most popular career in the society.
As a result, a lot of students register to attend A-group exams (mathematics, physics and chemistry), simply because this is the most popular exam group. Meanwhile, they do not know what they need, and do not care about if they have capability to take the jobs.
Especially, students and parents nowadays do not have information about their job opportunities, because they cannot find the information about the training structure and the manpower demand.
Educators, after being criticized for the problem, have been trying to bridge employers and students by organizing the meetings, where employers can show their demand and students can raise questions to know what they want to know.
In general, high schools invite the representatives of universities and junior colleges to the schools to give advices directly to students. However, the meetings are not enough for universities to provide useful information about their training majors.
It happens that after the meetings, school yards become the “rubbish dumps” with a lot of leaflets and ad papers delivered by universities and enterprises. Meanwhile, students leave the meetings with no useful information obtained. Thu Uyen