Career Central is a career guidance platform used by schools to support students, teachers, and caregivers in career planning. The platform is based around students developing career management competencies and is differentiated to suit different year levels. Students’ complete self-awareness modules, research and save jobs of interest and plan for their transition from school. Schools can also choose to add to the Future Pathway Assessments and personal strengths quiz which guide students into job families which may suit them.
Career Central: Online career guidance platform
Abstract
Website: Career Central
Career Central connects to a schools’ management system and relevant student and staff data is imported into the programme. This allows for single sign on (SSO) access and means all students are in the programme for tracking purposes.
Career Central is customisable by individual schools to suit their needs. Students will have a focus on self-awareness at year 9 and 10, leading into opportunity awareness and finally deciding and acting at years 12 and 13 as they prepare to leave school. Students can create a CV, complete Level 2 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) credits related to careers, book careers appointments, see relevant events and notices, complete quizzes, set goals, save jobs and courses of interest and more. Students would typically have access to edit and update their career profile during form/tutor/whanau time.
Staff can then see an individual career profile of each student showing their interests and intentions as well as being able to group students together based on commonalities. This allows for tracking of students and targeted communication.
Watch our demonstration of the platform here: Career Central Demonstration
The Career Central platform can be accessed by staff, students, and caregivers at any time and on any device. The programme integrates with other platforms such as CareersNZ, Study Spy and school management systems. Having all the information in one place saves time for teachers as they monitor student career plans. Career Central also offers free online support via a helpdesk and zoom training sessions as well as digital e-learning tutorials on the staff dashboards. The job data is pulled in from online job boards making it relevant and up-to-date.
All students have access to up-to-date information about jobs and courses. Students begin their career profile in the junior school and then edit and update it as more modules are made available to them and as they develop their career maturity. Career Central provides them with a single place for all careers related research and planning.
Staff involved in career guidance can monitor students and provide guidance and resources as required.
The programme comes at a cost to the school so this can be a barrier. Students also need to have access to a digital device and time to edit and update their career profile. Career Central works best when delivered school wide so the school needs to make space in the timetable for this. Students don’t need a lot of time in the programme just a few schedules sessions at each year level.
The resource is not free of charge.
Career Central offers free online support to schools. The program is intuitive, so teachers often do not need much support and we also have e-learning tutorials available on the staff dashboards.
Career Central is most effective when students have time at school to engage with the program. Schools who have an extended form time/wellbeing time have successfully used this time for career education using the platform. Engaging all staff in a school wide approach usually leads to better student engagement.
This resource has been endorsed by Wellington College in Wellington, New Zealand.
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