All your education questions answered by Brian Mooney.
My daughter is taking her Leaving Certificate in June 2008 and will be making her application to the CAO in the coming weeks. Is there anything I can do to assist her in this process, to ensure that she makes the right career choices?
The list of courses that your daughter will enter on her CAO application is highly unlikely to be directly related to a specific occupation. She will graduate and possibly undertake postgraduate studies, before she eventually selects an area of work to start her career in. The majority of programmes offered by colleges in the CAO system are broad-based explorations of knowledge, and are not career-specific. Students at third level follow programmes of study in a range of disciplines, ranging from the liberal arts, to business, science, engineering, law, etc. A small number of students take vocationally specific undergraduate courses, in areas such as nursing, medicine, veterinary science, architecture, dentistry etc. Unless your daughter is contemplating applying for programmes in a vocationally specific field (as outlined above), the issue of her career choice will not arise for some years.
Given that the majority of applicants selecting choices through the CAO process need not concern themselves with a specific career choice, what then should be the criteria governing their choices? The range of factors governing your daughter's choices are based on data accumulated over her lifetime to date, ie (a) the results of her Junior Certificate and her school examinations; (b) results from any aptitude, interest or attainments tests she has taken in the past number of years; (c) any skills or talents she may have manifested through formal training in music, art, sport, etc; (d) interests that have been explored as part of a work-experience programme, during her Transition Year, in the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme, or through a part-time job; (e) innate skills or talents that have become evident as she has grown and matured, (f) interests arising from her own research, or from a visit to a particular college open day; (g) ideas arising from her interactions with the guidance and counselling service in her school.
Your role in this process is that of any loving parent who wants their son or daughter to make the right choices. When a young person of 18 or 19 years of age perceives their parents to be attempting to make major life decisions on their behalf, they will most likely react negatively. If on the other hand, a parent tries to ensure that their son or daughter has all of the relevant pieces of information to hand when considering their options, they will have done them a great service.
Parents will remember when their son or daughter was attempting to assemble their first jigsaw puzzle. You sat beside them and watched as they tried to make sense of it all. If they got stuck and were losing heart, you may have nudged a piece of the puzzle discretely in their direction, to encourage them to complete the picture. I would suggest to all who want to support their sons and daughters, in making a successful transition from post-primary to further and higher education, to help them make sense of all the information available by asking the right questions, at the appropriate time, which will facilitate them in bringing all relevant facts into consideration, before making their CAO course choices.
Your daughter will have the continued support of her guidance counsellor in considering all of the options available to her, which are appropriate to her particular circumstances. You can access the information on every course offered through the CAO on www.qualifax.ie. Having make her initial application before February 1st next, she has the option of making any change she so wishes in this list of choices, up to the final date for such changes, which is July 1st, 2008.
Brian Mooney is the former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors.
E-mail questions to bmooney@irish- times.ie
