Careers Education: An Effective Tool for Poverty Reduction

Abstract

Education plays an important role in enhancing the quality of life of people, both old and young. However, the quality of education someone receives per time determines the impact and contributions he or she makes in terms of poverty reduction, income generation, wealth creation and social responsibility in his or her immediate environment. This can easily be achieved by being focused in one's career life. The objective of this paper is to look at careers education as an effective tool for poverty reduction. This paper is divided into five sections. Section two includes the concept of career education, objectives of career education, benefits of career education, section three includes the contributions of different theorists to career education development, academic and discipline realities and subjects to be included in school curriculum, section four is on careers education as an effective tool for poverty reduction, section five is the conclusion and recommendations. The research was carried out based mainly on the secondary source of data. Among other things, the study recommends that the government should formulate policies and programmes that will guide schools in designing their curricula that is career oriented and should refocus the poverty alleviation programmes to be more career educational oriented.

Keywords: Education, career, poverty reduction, effective tool

Nigerian Journal of Guidance and Counselling Vol. 13 (1) 2008: pp. 69-78