How to write a career education plan, Me pēhea te tuhituhi i te mahere mātauranga aramahi

A career education plan allows schools to:

• ensure strategic alignment with school-wide goals and plans
• identify and map where, when and how career-related learning happens across all levels and curriculum areas
• embed Te Tiriti o Waitangi commitments, inclusion and equity at the centre of career learning
• strengthen community and whānau engagement in career-related activities
• promote student agency, wellbeing and long-term success
• use evidence to show progress and inform decisions.

Make sure you draw on best practice and the Careers Quality Framework support information to guide your decisions. Invite whānau, iwi and the community to participate, as well as those in your school community.

New Zealand's Careers Quality Framework

A vision statement summarises the long-term impact that you want your career programme to achieve. It is both aspirational and practical, like a guiding star showing you where you want to go.

For example, "Helping every student confidently shape their future through meaningful career learning."

When crafting your vision ask yourself:

• what are my school’s goals, context, resources and opportunities?
• what milestones or outcomes do I want for the students?
• what is relevant to my local context?
• will it guide action in my plan?

Map out a plan that shows what career-related learning and support is currently occurring at the school. This will give you a good understanding of where there may be gaps and what needs to change as you work towards your vision.

1. Describe where and how career learning currently happens in formal and informal contexts. Provide examples, both big and small, and note any gaps. Consider:

• career education activities in the school
• classroom lessons
• extra-curricular activities, events and transition programmes
• links between secondary and tertiary pathways
• links between employers, work experience or industry engagement opportunities.

2. Building on what you have, map out how students can progressively build their career management competencies across year levels. This can happen through:

• one-to-one engagement with the career adviser
• integration of careers into curriculum and subject areas
• pastoral care and co-curricular activities
• vocational pathways like Gateway, STAR, and Trades Academies
• work-based learning and industry or employer engagement opportunities.

3. Gather information to check what’s working and to strengthen your approach using a variety of evidence sources, such as:

• student feedback and surveys
• whānau and iwi perspectives
• employer input
• transition and destination data, and self-review tools.

4. Using all this planning, create a map showing what career learning will happen at each year level and how this will build students’ career competencies, skills and confidence to map their pathways through and beyond school.

Effective planning and review depend on providing strong evidence. This can be used to support your career education plan, tell the story of success to school leadership, or identify improvements.

Find out what data and feedback you can use to show the impact of career learning in your school. For example:

• student data or survey information
• transition outcomes and achievement results
• reporting data already gathered for the Ministry of Education, TEC or NZQA.

Collecting additional evidence over time can add to your evaluation and evidence, such as:

• staff, student, employer and whānau feedback
• student work samples
• student success stories and case studies
• departmental plans and reports.

The content you decide to include in your career development plan depends on your school context. Most schools have accepted ways of organising and writing planning and management documents.

Key documents to use during your planning include:

• your school’s policies, strategies and processes to ensure career education is sustainable, equitable and responsive to student needs, to develop student agency and wellbeing
• strategic goals for priority students, such as Māori, Pacific peoples, former refugees, neurodiverse and supported students, including students who may need further support to successfully transition.

Other areas which could support your vision to come to life include:

• career team roles and responsibilities
• processes for tracking student transitions
• calendar of events and programme delivery
• access to resources, spaces and technologies
• budget and allocation of resourcing
• processes for review.

To strengthen your plan, add how you will link to those communities that do and will impact on your students’ pathway options.

This could include what you are doing now with industry, whānau and communities, as well as what you would like to do and how you could action this.

Examples:

• Volunteer work.
• Career and tertiary expos.
• Inspiring the Future role model events.
• Connecting with local businesses through Gateway and Trades Academies.
• Connecting with local businesses through other formal and informal events.

Ensuring whānau and communities are kept up to date with careers in schools.

Mapping an annual programme of career activities for each year level will support you to achieve your career education plan vision and goals.

You can access the following resources to support your planning or use others provided through professional career bodies.

Career activities for the classroom

Bring your plan to life through meaningful implementation, ongoing review and collaborative practice. Make it a living document that evolves as your context and students’ needs change.

Effective plans are:

• accessible and easy to communicate
• regularly reviewed and improved
• shared with staff, students, whānau, iwi and local industry
• grounded in data and reflection.

Treat your plan as a taonga – share it widely, revisit it regularly and keep your students’ futures at the centre.

Career activities for the classroom

Inspiring the Future

New Zealand’s Careers Quality Framework