CAREER EDUCATION AND GUIDANCE IN EUROPE   Lefki Hadjitofi  Cypriot Association of School  Guidance Counselors (OELMEK)   15 /04/2005

CAREER GUIDANCE IN EUROPE Defini tion of Career Guidance  Career guidance refers to services and activities intended to assist individuals, of any age and at any point throughout their lives, to make educational, training and occupational choices and to manage their careers.  Such services may be found in schools, universities and colleges, in training institutions, in public employment services, in the workplace, in the voluntary and community sector and in the private sector.  The activities may take place on an individual or group basis, and may be face- to- face or at a distance.

Career Guidance in Europe  They include:  Career info provision  Assessment and self-assessment tools  Counseling interviews  Career education programmes  Taster programmes (to sample options before choosing them)  Work search programs  Transition services. European Commission and the World Bank

Career Education and Guidance in schools  One of the main settings for delivering guidance services is –and has been for a long time – the school, and indeed, that is where the young people are most likely first to come across formally-provided guidance.  Today, most countries extend the provision of services to different school levels, providing services in a richer variety of ways.  There is a clear trend across the 29 countries reviewed to expand guidance services vertically, across all grade levels of lower and upper secondary school, so that it is developmental in orientation.

Career Education and Guidance in schools today  Career education & guidance in the primary school are limited or non-existent.  Young people need to make a smooth transition from primary to the initial years of secondary school. Career guidance needs to be part of the process that helps them to make a smooth transition.  Career education is increasingly present in the curriculum at the lower secondary school level, either as a separate subject or included in another subject.

Career Education and Guidance in schools  At times, the curriculum seems to be designed to suit the organizational needs of the school rather than the career development needs of the student.  Often career education has little connection to the wider school curriculum.  In lower secondary school personal career guidance frequently targets students at key decision-making points:  When they are choosing subjects  Prior to to the end of compulsory schooling  At the transition to upper secondary level or to work. However, often those who are targeted for personal interviews are not selected on the basis of well-defined need.

Career Education and Guidance in schools – Upper secondary schooling  It is often assumed that upper secondary- school students have made their educational and career choices and that they do not need further support.  This assumption is especially made for students in vocational education pathways.  In many countries, they receive significantly less career assistance than students in general education pathways, despite the increasing flexibility included in upper secondary vocational education programmes, or the wide range of career options and jobs that can flow from broadly designed vocational education and training.

Career Education and Guidance in schools – Upper secondary schooling  Within general education pathways career staff often spend substantial time preparing students to choose and compete for tertiary-education places. This can result in those not intending to enter tertiary education receiving little help and little account being taken of the occupational and labour market consequences of particular tertiary education choices.

Career Education and Guidance in schools- Issues that apply to all levels of schooling  Those who provide career education and guidance in schools are often not career-guidance specialists. They often combine it with other roles:  teaching other school subjects  providing counseling& guidance for personal problems & study difficulties. The number of people employed to provide career education & guidance in schools is often not enough to meet student need & demand. Often services continue to be provided largely on an individual, face–to- face model. This reduces the capacity of the service to respond to all the learners’ needs.

Career Education and Guidance in schools Issues that apply to all levels of schooling  Often career-guidance staff do not have the resources they need to do the job properly:  A private space for interviews  A library of up-to-date career information  A computer  Access to a telephone  Secretarial assistance.

Career Education and Guidance in schools Issues that apply to all levels of schooling Many school career guidance services have tenuous links with the world of work:  Teaching staff know little about the labour market & what is involved in different types of jobs  Little contact exists with the public-employment service  Students have very few or no opportunities to take part in work experience  Few employers are invited into the schools to talk to students  Parents have little involvement in the school’s career program

Career Education and Guidance in schools Issues that apply to all levels of schooling  Careers fairs in which groups of employers come to the one location to provide info to students do not take place.  Career education and guidance are often considered to be the sole responsibility of the specialist career guidance staff, rather than the joint responsibility of all the members of the teaching staff.  School career guidance services are often not audited and users have little opportunity to signal satisfaction or otherwise with the services provided. No data is collected on student, teacher, parent or employer satisfaction with the service. 

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe  While career guidance can trace its origins to the early 20 th century, it has not yet become professionalised in Europe largely because its ranks draw on other, often more strongly established professions, with which guidance might identify more strongly.  Typically, career guidance workers have a background in, or spend much of their time as teachers, psychologists, counsellors, info mediators and human resource specialists.  Access to the profession is not strongly regulated contributing to weak professional framing.

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe  Guidance workers have a most disparate background in training and qualifications (Watts, 1992), which has serious implications for the quality of service offered, a point made in the European Commission’s report on Quality indicators for lifelong learning (European Commission, 2002a).

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe  An attempt to overcome such disparity, has been made by Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland which are working together on a Leonardo da Vinci programme that will lead to equivalence in certification for their career guidance staff.  Concern about standards of professional qualifications is particularly justified in the case of several European countries where a person can, in some sectors, formal career guidance without any specific training in the field at all, or where a few hours of in-service training are deemed to suffice (France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg).

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe  Other countries, are more demanding, either requiring guidance workers to have a master’s degree (e.g. Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, Romania), although this might be in Psychology, rather than in career guidance.  Several countries offer specialised master’s-level degrees programs (e.g. Finland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the United Kingdom), but often, employers of career guidance staff and most frequently the state demand qualifications from fields related to guidance, rather than guidance itself.

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe  Most career guidance staff in schools are required to combine their duties with other activities. They often teach a regular curriculum area for at least have or more of their time (Flemish-speaking Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Malta, Spain).  In Germany, staff employed in teaching full-time are given an extra allowance to provide career guidance over and above their duties.  Many staff members also find themselves bogged down by administrative duties, such as managing the choice of subject clusters or helping students fill in further education application forms. 

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe  Overall, occupational roles are generally not well defined.  In most countries, individual, face-to-face guidance still predominates service delivery (e.g. in the education sector in France, Iceland, Portugal, Luxembourg).  In some countries, resource allocation is worked out guidance staff-to student ratios.  Typically, the staff-to-student ratio is high:

Career Education and Guidance in schools Profile of Guidance Workers in Europe Cyprus, Romania, Sweden 1800 Bulgaria, Ireland & Malta 1500 Netherlands1300 – 400 Finland1Less than 272

Career Education and Guidance in schools The Quality of Career Guidance  Because of the great disparity and lack of professionalisation of guidance workers, there is little regular regular and systematic evaluation of the quality of career guidance services in most countries.  Standards for the quality of services do not exist or are present in some sectors but not in others.  Where quality standards exist, they tend to be voluntary rather than mandatory.  Only occasionally do quality standards have checking procedures or sanctions attached to them. 

Career Education and Guidance in schools The Quality of Career Guidance  There are no standards or control in private sector provision of career guidance services.  Career guidance policies are insufficiently guided by user feedback and by relevant evidence and data, including such basis of data as levels of usage and types of services accessed.  In the absence of quality frameworks, there is an over-reliance on staff qualifications or professional codes of practice to assure quality.

Career Education and Guidance in schools Some common criteria to assess the Quality of Career Guidance  Citizen and User Involvement  Practitioner Competence  Service Improvement  Coherence  Independent Provision

Career Education and Guidance in schools  Concluding, it would be safe to say that there are plenty of things at a Cypriot and European level that need to be done before career guidance is well established, assuring quality and standing on its own, without needing the support of other sciences in order to survive.  Most of the problems that career guidance workers face in Europe are very similar to ours but at some points, we are in an advantageous position.  Let us keep up with the hard work, so that we solve our problems and improve the areas that are more promising. 

Career Education and Guidance in schools  Thank you very much for your attention!