The purpose of individual planning is to guide all students as they plan, monitor, and manage their own educational, career, and personal-social development. Schools can systematically use a variety of resources, information, and activities to focus resources on the students and assist individual students to develop and implement personalized plans. Through the individual student planning system, students can:

• Set challenging educational, career, and personal-social goals that are based on self-knowledge and information about the school, world of work, and society;
• Make plans for achieving short-, intermediate-, and long-term goals;
• Analyze how their strengths and weaknesses enhance or hinder the achievement of their goals;
• Assess their current progress toward their goals; and
• Make decisions that reflect their plans.

As part of the school counseling program, the individual student planning system includes:

• age-appropriate, objective-based activities;
• relevant, accurate, and unbiased information; and
• coordinated advisement procedures to facilitate appropriate placement decisions by students and their parents.
• Parent involvement is essential. 

Parents' Role in Individual Planning

Educational and career decision-making, planning, and goal-setting are primarily the responsibility of the students and their parents. Thus, parent involvement in the individual student planning system is essential to students' successful development and implementation of educational and career plans. Parents are provided accurate and meaningful information in a timely manner as school-based activities are implemented.

Examples of typical systematic opportunities for providing individual student planning assistance include the interpretation of standardized test results, career development activities (e.g., Career Fair), strategies provided to facilitate students' transition from one school level to the next, pre-registration for courses for the subsequent school year, and assisting students to research and secure financial aid for post-secondary education and/or training and scholarship application opportunities.

The school counselors and college, career, and military readiness (CCMR) coordinators may conduct the group sessions and/or consult with students' advisors and parents. They have responsibility for assuring accurate and meaningful interpretation of test and other appraisal results information to students, teachers, and parents. They may coordinate or consult with those who are responsible for providing other career and educational information and the procedures whereby teachers make placement recommendations. They refer or consult regarding the procedures for referral of students with needs for special/targeted educational programs such as gifted, students in at-risk situations, Section 504, and special education.