Secondary school students often making ill-advised decisions on core subjects – report

Students at secondary school are forced to choose their core subjects, which are supposed to be linked to their future choice of career, without being properly informed and at a point in their life when they may lack experience and maturity, an education reform report has found.

The report, on the future of post-secondary education, was launched by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo earlier this week. It lists 13 challenges in post-secondary education as well as 26 recommendations, one of which is “to revisit” the stage during the learner journey where students are compelled to choose their core subjects.

This is more important since, as a broad yardstick, one in every two students at post-secondary education study the same subject he or she has chosen at the end of Year 8 of secondary school.

Therefore, it is imperative that secondary school students are informed, through the use of all available media channels, about the importance of decisions made that may impact the future learning journey beyond age 16.

“Since post-secondary schooling is very much the result of decisions taken in secondary schooling there is an urgent need to raise awareness of this issue with secondary school students and their parents. There are concerns about students in Form 2 (Grade 9) already being asked to choose option subjects to be followed for the next three years.”

The report says this choice comes about too early in the life of the student. “Young people are routinely not given access to information on the full range of choices available to them. At 16, most students have not had the necessary experience to decide which learning style is best for them in a particular field, and much less an idea of the career they may wish to pursue in adulthood.

Parents are also often unable to give their children good, up-todate advice, resulting with many young people making ill-advised choices based on too narrow an understanding of what they can do and what they might be capable of doing in the future. With the discrepancy in levels and skills required between SEC level and level 4 courses, this has become even more difficult.”

Ensuring that students are better informed about the choices before them is more important since the most important cause of drop-out, as noted by research, is making the wrong choice at the entry point. “Students are being obliged to make definitive decisions at an age when most are too inexperienced, and even perhaps too immature to do so.”

The working group is calling on the relevant authorities to clearly map the learner journey from kindergarten all the way to post-secondary education, such that the stages, options and choices made by students and parents are clearly identified.

“These will include the specific stages in secondary school where students are compelled to make regarding choices in subjects for SEC; and the options available to swap to and from an academic to a Vocational Education and Training path.