Help for young people in Year 9
How Connexions can Help
Your son/daughter can speak to their Connexions Personal Adviser (PA) for help/advice with their options. They can find their PA at their school or nearest Connexions Centre. If you would like more help, get in touch with you son or daughter’s PA. Our PAs can meet and talk to you about any questions or concerns you may have. They can see you at your son or daughter’s school, at your local Connexions Centre, at school parents’ evenings, options evenings and career events. Personal Advisers provide free, friendly and impartial information, advice and guidance about any issues that may affect your son or daughter. In some cases, if a student is identified as needing extra help deciding on their options a PA may produce an action plan to help him or her decide what to do next.
How you can help
There are lots of ways you can help your son or daughter make the right decision for them.
- Get information - by finding out more about the choices they face, you can help your son or daughter make an informed decision. Your son or daughter has a wider choice of subjects and qualifications than you had at their age so it is important that you find out how the curriculum has changed. Try to keep an open mind about these changes and find out about qualifications that may be unfamiliar to you rather than dismissing them straight away.
- Find out what subjects your son/daughter is interested in - they are more likely to do well in a subject that they enjoy.
- Find out what they are good at - this doesn’t just apply to subjects they do well in at school, think about what they are good at outside of schoolwork.
- Do they plan to continue in education past Year 11? - do they have a career in mind? If so what sort of qualifications will they need to do this? Are their hopes realistic? Not only should your son/daughter be thinking about what they will be doing during the next two years, they should be contemplating what they will be doing in the more distant future. You can help ensure that they take into account any subjects they may need to study if they do have a specific career in mind.
- How do they like to learn? - different courses are examined in different ways and different methods of learning are used. Some subjects may involved more coursework than others. Does your son/daughter prefer practical work or classroom based learning?
