Telling a pupil he/she can't do something because he/she is too bad for this role is just wrong.

This is also not something we tell them. We do encourage them to explore multiple options but we do not tell them what they can and cannot do. But from the point of view of an employer, you can be very picky and don't have to take an apprentice on the off-chance that they're suddenly good at all the things they weren't good before. I'm not saying they are lacking the potential but there's many ways to progress through the Swiss education system. And for them, it will most likely not be a KV apprenticeship even if we tell them that they should not give up and support them with more KV applications as well as exploring alternatives.

We also have guys who want to do FaGe because they can work with (and therefore meet) a lot of girls/women because it's a sector dominated by women. And also here, we're not the ones deciding what they go for and what they don't go for. We try to support them but their motivation, their goals, their skills and their plans are sometimes all over the place.

And as you correctly said, it's a lot of pressure on young people. They've basically only seen the school so far - how should they know what to do for the next three or four years? And while we do sometimes suggest directions to the pupils, we never decide anything for them. The same goes for the alternative solutions - we highly recommend signing up for a 10th grade, motivational semester or another suitable option and support them with doing that if they can't find an apprenticeship. And those aren't actually inferior solutions and I like to believe that a lot of students to benefit greatly from them.