After the government has implemented ‘career and life-planning’ in secondary for one year, the education sector starts to evaluate its effect. Regarding different related news reports, there were more negative comments than the positive among secondary schools. For instance, some claimed it was hard to help students on ‘planning’ as the activities are incoherent. Also, some schools used the funding to expand their staffing but not execute something related. Besides, many educational institutions organized fake ‘career-and-life-planning’ programs so as to get a bite on this large amount of funding. Why do the problems appear?
Before knowing the reason behind, it is necessary for us to understand what ‘career and life planning’ is. Simply speaking, career and life planning aims to plan the next step of a person’s life once the person needs to make decision. The planning should not only career, but also every aspect of life like marriage, pursuit of goal in life, retirement etc. there are different models for career and life planning and most of them could, based on their interests, strengths, values, believes, experience and aspirations, help participants find the next steps when they need to make decision.
According to the concept above, there is still a far distance between the real career and life planning and what secondary schools are currently doing. Hence, for solving these problems, the Education Bureau should evaluate and re-plan the whole program. First, the bureau should identify the phase the students need to make decision, like choosing the electives for senior secondary study, studying or working after graduation etc., and formulate a guideline and relevant activities for every phase, which not only lets schools know clearly about the purpose and operation of the program, but also help eradicate ‘profit-making’ phenomenon among education institutions through organizing the fake activities. Second, apart from providing information about studies and working after graduation, the activities under the program should be able to help students find their interests and aspirations. Furthermore, given that counseling is one of the major elements in career and life planning, this program should be executed by school social workers or school counselors.
At this moment, some schools demand the increase of the funding from the government. Nonetheless, before raising the funding, evaluation and re-planning of the whole program by the government are a necessity for the sake of achieving real career and life planning for students.