The personal and professional skills course (PPS) is a compulsory component of the Career-related Programme (CP) core.

Personal and professional skills is designed for students to develop attitudes, skills and strategies to be applied to personal and professional situations and contexts now and in the future. In this course the emphasis is on skills development for the workplace, as these are transferable and can be applied in a range of situations.

Other qualities the course should encourage include:

• responsibility

• perseverance

• resilience

• self-esteem

• academic honesty.

Based on the aims, learning outcomes and five themes presented in this guide, each school designs and develops its own unique personal and professional skills course that enables its particular students to make links to their career-related studies.

This guide suggests topics, subtopics, discussion questions and related activities, but the teacher is free to introduce others. However, the five themes must remain the course’s focal points.

The school is responsible for assessing the progress of its students in relation to the specified learning outcomes.

The course is a minimum of 90 hours and is incorporated into the HCA Career Technical Education courses during junior and senior year at Blair.

(Adapted from Personal and Professional Skills Guide for use from 2016)