The number of teenagers who are leaving high schools without career counselling has caught the attention of Angela deFreitas, general manager of CHOICES magazine. She believes that with more career counselling in schools, students will be better able to choose the right path.

She was speaking at the launch of the seventh annual 'CHOICES' Career and Education Expo last Monday at the Hilton Kingston hotel, as she sought to explain how the upcoming expositions on June 5 at the same hotel and on June 7 at the Golf View Hotel in Mandeville would bridge the gap by giving students and other visitors vital information in this subject area.

"The vast majority of our young people are leaving secondary institutions without having had the benefit of sitting with someone to discuss their future, their plans, and their ambitions ... and, not only that but, how they are going to put those plans in place and bring them to life ... simply put, what their next move will be," she said.

Career counselling

Linking this to the number of what she termed "undereducated" and unemployed youth, she recognised that counsellors faced "a mammoth task within the school system with the variety of different types of problems affecting our children both within and without the school. Career counselling, as important as it is to the future success of these young people, naturally has to take a back seat when students are bringing guns into school, and teenage girls are becoming pregnant."

"I believe we must be aiming to reach a point in our development where every student is able to have a one-on-one counselling session with a career counsellor before leaving school. Every school-leaver deserves and should get career counselling," she added.

However, she said the counsellors are not to be blamed as they are seizing opportunities to qualify themselves within the discipline. In this respect, each year, hundreds of counsellors attend the expo and participate in special career development seminars which have been staged annually by CHOICES.

This year's seminar will be themed 'Finding Direction' and will take place in Kingston on June 5.