The impact of school on career choice among secondary school students

Abstract

Many factors affect how people make career choices. The study sought to investigate school influence on career pathways among secondary school students in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. The investigation serves as a springboard to establishing a career guidance model that would assist career guidance teachers in high schools in their endeavours to help students make career choices from a well-informed perspective. A self-designed questionnaire was used in collecting data from the participants. One thousand and ten high school students and 20 career guidance teachers participated in the study. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 19 was used to calculate the percentages that were used to analyse the data. The study revealed that schools had an impact on secondary school students’ choice of careers. The geographical location of schools was cited as quite influential in the choices of careers by students and career guidance teachers are allowed to teach career guidance.

Keywords: Career, career choice, guidance, secondary school