Starter Kit. Idea 333 of 500. Cluster 16
Careers counselling as a business, since the families guess
The mechanism, from the book
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a place. The other 130,000 are a market that nobody has built for, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The first step
Offer free 45-minute careers sessions to 10 A-Level students in one town, covering jobs, courses and what each pays, and ask their parents to sit in. Ask the parents afterwards what they would have paid for it. Then run a paid session for a family who heard about it from another. A family who pays after word of mouth is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A family deciding between university, a polytechnic and a job, who will pay to replace guesswork with a plan.
- What leaves today
- Families guess at careers and choose on prestige, so the polytechnic that leads to a job is passed over for a place that may never come.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask for the list of recognised courses and where each one leads.
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what care is needed with students' personal and family details.
Check before you spend
That every salary and course figure you give families comes from a source you can show, and what qualifications you can honestly claim as a counsellor.
Find out these three numbers
- What would parents have paid for a careers session?
- How many families heard of you from another family?
- Which careers do families ask about most?
A comparison from the book
Singapore's polytechnics. Chapter One
"A wedding conversation moves on evidence, not on ministries."
Show families real salaries and real careers; evidence changes what they are proud to choose.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.