Pimville based Batsogile Primary School held a career expo for Grade Sevens on Wednesday.
Organised in conjunction with University of Johannesburg Student Buhle Hadebe, the expo was aimed to equip Grade Sevens with information to help them choose the right subjects going to secondary school.
Practising professionals from various fields were invited to share knowledge and advice pupils. Speakers were from Kliptown Police Station, Pimville Clinic, Adcoc Ingram and medical students from Wits University.
Grade Seven pupils had to do presentations explaining why they chose the careers they chose and what they understand about them.
Warrant Officer Johannes Maleke from the Kliptown Police Station spoke to pupils and explained to them what it means to be a police officer.
“Police are not here to kill people but our duty is to serve and protect the country. There are a lot of things one can do in the service; you just have to have to be able to work with the community,” said Maleke.
The expo was directed at Grade Sevens because they are faced with the task of choosing the right subjects next year when they go to Grade Eight.
Hadebe organised the expo because she wanted to address the issue of university dropout which is due to failure because of choosing wrong subjects.
“We basically wanted to motivate them and point them in the right direction. Statistics have proven that the most common reason why students drop out of university is because they go there without knowledge of what to do.
“Most of them go there wanting to make money after graduation. This is to show that whatever they want to do as professionals should relate to their personal attributes,” said Hadebe.
She is already thinking about ways of making the expo sustainable and becoming an annual event. Other professionals involved were teachers and librarian from Batsogile and social workers from the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SANCA).
