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One of the challenges facing university counsellors is managing the sometimes differing aspirations of students and their parents. As counsellors, you will have your own strategies for navigating this in your school – but that is not the focus of this article.

Instead, I am looking at how to get support from parents as a resource that can benefit the school in a wider sense, particularly for flagship events such as university or careers fairs. This takes careful planning, but it can add immeasurably to the effectiveness of a school’s careers and counselling provision.

Involving parents in careers counselling

Like most counsellors, I do not believe that it is my role to direct my students towards careers or university courses, but rather to ensure that they are equipped with the skills, information and flexibility to choose their own paths. Signposts rather than directions. In this respect, parents offer a wealth of knowledge, real-life experience and practical guidance.

Having tried different formats, I found that the model that works best for me is to set up small “parent panels”, chaired by a teacher. (To avoid too much disruption to the school timetable, I use the teachers who would normally be teaching that year group.)

I aim to have three parents on each panel, from a variety of work backgrounds (for example, an architect, an entrepreneur and a doctor) talking to a group of 10 to 15 students for 25 to 30 minutes.

Each parent gives a short introduction. Then, chat-show-style, the chair asks them questions about career decisions, important skills and top tips. The students are encouraged to ask questions or respond to the panel’s answers.

I have several panels running in parallel, and the students rotate through two to three panels over the course of the afternoon.

Briefing the parents in advance is important to avoid the sessions becoming too focused on specific jobs: it works best when they talk about decisions (good and bad), career changes, missed opportunities and their own “would’ve, should’ve, could’ve” lists.

To introduce the event, I invite a speaker to talk on a particular overarching theme to the day, such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals or environmental issues. The day ends with the students coming together and sharing thoughts through an online platform such as a Mentimeter or Slido questionnaire, word clouds or other data visualisation apps that can display the feedback in an accessible and visually appealing manner.

Involving parents in university counselling

In contrast to the careers approach, I have found that inviting parents to talk about what they studied at university is much less effective, because the students are not particularly engaged by this – they feel (probably correctly) that the information from the parents is old hat.

The students respond much more to talking with university reps in a standard university fair environment, where they can wander around and meet those who are relevant to their own plans (or, equally, visit the stands that have the best promotional materials and gifts).

So, what is the best way to involve parents in university counselling? I think a better approach is to focus on what it is actually like to study (rather than what to study) at university and to talk about their experiences of accommodation, lectures or classes, campus and social life, how they made their own university choices, and what they would study if they could turn back time.

It works particularly well if, again, some of the parents discuss their own mistakes. To make it more entertaining for the students, parents can work in pairs (with proper briefing beforehand), championing different ideas: campus vs city; UK system vs US system; or staying in your home country vs having an adventure overseas. The session also ends with students voting and displaying the results graphically.

Practicalities of involving parents

Finding the right parents

Getting parent volunteers tends not to be too difficult, particularly if the school has a parent-teacher group or similar. But getting the right parents, who will enter into the spirit of these events and enjoy the informal nature of them, is harder.

I tend to start by approaching one or two parents who I know will be suitable, and then asking them to suggest others who would fit the bill, rather than asking for volunteers via an all-parent email.

Briefing parents properly

Briefing is all-important. The emphasis should be on getting the students to think about options and consider ideas that they might not have thought about before; it is vital to avoid the hard-selling of particular jobs, degree subjects or destinations.

Providing visual feedback

Immediate and visual feedback from the students is an entertaining way of ending what can be a tiring morning/afternoon/day for the students. While they might enjoy a short keynote presentation to start the event, by the end of it, they will not want to sit through a closing speech. Ten minutes of something active as a summary – questionnaires, a feedback survey or a quiz with prizes – is a nice way to close the event.

Useful resources

The following are useful resources for the closing feedback session: