In Toulouse, second-year students return to school, full of questions about their orientation
It’s a pivotal, strategic year in high school: the second. The students returned to school this Thursday at the Toulouse-Lautrec high school, under the eyes of the president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga. The latter is to discover a brand new device created to help students orient themselves, a mobile orientation house.
A pivotal year… with Parcoursup in sight
The orientation, the different existing routes. This is one of the big topics of discussion among second graders. Indeed, they must position themselves by the end of the year, in order to then choose their specialty lessons as required by the new baccalaureate. A strategic choice, because it is then complicated to completely change gear. And when you are not yet sure of the profession you want to practice later, it is all the more difficult to choose for some.
Many are already thinking of Parcoursup, the famous platform that makes the selection to guide high school students towards higher education. For this, the algorithm is based in particular on the school report cards of the pupils. “I find that it classifies people in boxes (…) To enter higher education, we have been explained, it is really with your school record while there are plenty of other things that can count“regrets Naëlle, a second-year student at Toulouse-Lautrec.
Discover the trades
To introduce trades and training, the region relies on Mobile orientation houses. Two vehicles, types of prefabricated (which can therefore move from one establishment to another) in which the students can exchange during the interview, receive information, discover certain trades via virtual reality helmets, for example. The “Trajectories” project was also created to support young people. The idea is to broaden the horizons of students, “to break the glass ceiling that often exists for young people from modest backgrounds“explains the president of the Occitanie Region, Carole Delga.
The mobile orientation houses will be on September 27 at the Cugnaux high school (Haute-Garonne) then on October 3 in the brand new Simone de Beauvoir high school in Gragnague.