Ms Helen McMahon:

It depends on the communication plan that one puts in place and how one talks to younger kids. At that stage, it is about using role models, getting involved in creative collaboration and getting children to think about the subjects in that capacity, in terms of play, when they are quite young. They will not have the cognitive ability at that stage to really grasp the concept of career trajectories. However, once they move to the next level and are in secondary school, it gets much more into life mapping of lifelong career guidance and looking at career trajectory.

Obviously, that goes further in their career in terms of career pathways. Again, it is about mapping out the age of the individual and how you interact with people through different stages of their growth. It is also then about mapping out the roles so that the career guidance professionals can have the knowledge to explain that to children and parents, who are, as everybody knows, hugely influential on their development at this stage. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but a different approach. It should be through the entire system. It should be a different approach depending on the stage of development of the individual to empower that person to bring it through their entire life by building their capability.