“Percorso universitario e professionale e voto di maturità: un’indagine su alunni di Rieti 5 anni dopo la maturità condotta dagli insegnanti del master “Mediatori dell’orientamento”Convegno Studi e processi sull’orientamento scolastico e professionale, Università degli studi di Cassino, 5-6 maggio 2004, Sora.

Our investigation complies with lawmakers’ latest directions, which aim at encouraging teachers to check students’ university and job choices, and the results obtained, with vocational counselling activities set out at school.To this end, some high-school teachers of Rieti who had attended a post-graduate course for “Vocational counsellors” were asked (suggested) by course teachers to carry out an investigation on the professional and/or educational itineraries of some among their former pupils, classified according to sex, kind of school and school-leaving marks, five years after their school-leaving exams.The method used was that of autobiographic narration. A qualitative analysis of data was then carried out, based on such parameters as life events connected with career development, professional or educational choices, college success and degree of job satisfaction. The quantitative analysis of data shows no evidence of a relationship between school performance and professional satisfaction, in a more evident way among boys than among girls. The higher amount of girls who get minimum satisfaction from their job, even though they left school with higher average marks, is relevant. In this regard, the qualitative analysis of life events proves useful, because of the different way they affect people according to sex, especially as far as events like marriage and the birth of children are concerned. This analysis also proves meaningful for the identification of events connected with job opportunities. A flexible attitude of subjects’ in picking up accidental opportunities seems to favour introduction in professional life and job satisfaction.