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Proper counseling will address youth unemployment, says Adekanye

By Iyabo Lawal
24 May 2018   |   3:45 am
Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Education, Mrs. Adebunmi Adekanye has pointed out that proper guidance and counseling of our youths on the choice of career or vocation will help in reducing unemployment in the country.

Director of Account, Mrs Olabisi Boco (left); Director, Child Guidance, School Counselling and Special Education, Mrs Ketimu Musa; and Guest Lecturer, Dr. Dokun Adedeji at the workshop organised by Lagos State Ministry of Education.

Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Education, Mrs. Adebunmi Adekanye has pointed out that proper guidance and counseling of our youths on the choice of career or vocation will help in reducing unemployment in the country.

Adekanye who disclosed this at a workshop on “The relevance of Career/Vocational Guidance to Lagos State Secondary School Students”, said the programme was aimed at tackling the challenges confronting the sector, particularly youth unemployment and its attendant socio- economic consequences on the society.

Represented by the Director, Child Guidance, School Counselling and Special Education, Mrs Ketimu Musa, the Permanent Secretary said the disdain with which the society looked at the vocational and technical schools for some decades past is taking its toll on the youths.

She also lamented the nation’s emphasis on certificates ‘in an economy where white collar jobs are scarce.“Jobs abound in building environment but to get good hands in mason, tiling, carpentry, furniture making is an issue. Many property investors go as far as Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana and Cameroon to get labour. The agro business sector of our economy has the capacity to employ a lot of people but our youths lack skill in this sector,” she lamented.

Adekanye enjoined the counsellors not to shy away from advising students who are better off in vocational and technical colleges to go there in the spirit of the 6-3-3-4 system of education that we practice in the country.

The workshop, she added was designed to further engrain in the counsellors the capacity to help the young students in their choice of career or vocation at the end of their Junior Secondary School (JSS) education through the application of the aptitude test and occupational Interest Inventory, a diagnostic psychological instrument administered annually to J.S. S three students in the state to place them into appropriate senior class of technical, humanities, business studies or sciences.

The Permanent Secretary noted that the judgement and advice of the Guidance Counsellors is very important at this stage of child development because parental and peer influence make some students insist on a particular course of study without considering their own capacity to pursue the course.She said, “we owe it a duty to properly guide and counsel such students towards making them successful and self- dependent in the future.

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