World of work

Gone are the days when secondary school teachers could affect to ignore the existence of colleges of further education, or training schemes within the industry, to which many of their pupils would be proceeding as soon as they were allowed to leave school. Link schemes between schools and colleges are now commonplace and vary from the provision within a college of courses for individual subjects not available in schools to programmes in preparation for the transition from school to work, for pupils with limited educational achievements and no clear vocational aspirations. Bridging and foundation courses are laid on to help the less successful pupils to gain confidence by the acquisition of some skill which may not itself lead to a job, but which can at least be used to persuade an employer that the young person is likely to be trainable for some job he can offer. All this flexibility of provision has taken place in parallel with a marked extension of careers education and guidance, both within the schools and from the Careers Service.