Page 6 - Creating Pathways to Success

strengths, needs, and aspirations of the students and honour all postsecondary destinations – apprenticeship training, college, community living, university, and the workplace.
The education and career/life planning program presented in this document succeeds when the entire school community is informed about it, engaged in it, and committed to it. In secondary schools, guidance staff play a strategic role in the development and implementation of the program, as part of the delivery of the school’s guidance and career education program.
Ontario Schools, Kindergarten to Grade 12, describes the three areas of learning that constitute the Ontario guidance and career education program, as follows:
• student development – the development of habits and skills necessary for learning
• interpersonal development – the development of the knowledge and skills needed in getting along with others
• career development – the development of the knowledge and skills needed to set short-term and long-term goals in planning for the future
Creating Pathways to Success: An Education and Career/Life Planning Program for Ontario Schools – Policy and Program Requirements, Kindergarten to Grade 12,
2013 is designed to support all three areas of learning as they relate to education and career/life planning.2 The planning framework introduced in this document focuses on students’ self-discovery and self-knowledge and on their creative use of this knowledge in the exploration of opportunities and the planning of pathways for education, career, and life. The education and career/life planning framework provides a focus for much of the excellent work already being done in the context of schools’ guidance and career education programs, and facilitates the recognition of student learning gained through the programs.
The organization of this document
Users of this document will find the policy and program requirements for the education and career/life planning program set out in Chapters 2 and 3.
Chapter 4 deals with transition planning, which is a natural and essential focus of pathways planning.
2. Formerly, the document Choices Into Action: Guidance and Career Education Program Policy for Ontario Elementary and Secondary Schools, 1999 was the sole ministry policy document covering all three areas of learning. Now, the first two areas of learning – student development and interpersonal development – are addressed in connection with the learning skills and work habits described in Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation, and Reporting in Ontario Schools – First Edition, Covering Grades 1 to 12, 2010. For each of the learning skills and work habits, Growing Success provides examples of associated behaviours, which are intended to serve as a guide for teachers in instruction, assessment, and evaluation related to the learning skills and work habits. Support for students in their development in these two areas of learning
is provided both through classroom instruction and individual and small group counselling (see section 5 of Growing Success).
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CREATING PATHWAYS TO SUCCESS