Aims for, and access to, career development
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3311/ope.373Abstract
Career guidance is viewed as a policy instrument to support the achievement of a broad range of social policy goals for different segments of the population by most of the 33 countries taking part in this International Symposium. For young people, such goals include preparation for work and successful transitions to education, training, and employment. For adults, they concern upskilling and reskilling, employment and employability, and managing multiple work transitions. For employers, they concern addressing skills shortages and workforce adaptability. For education systems, they are seen as a way to improve their efficiency and effectiveness - the retention, performance, and progression of students. For vulnerable groups in society, they concern social mobility through education and workforce participation. However, despite these high expectations, in many countries, access to career guidance services is limited in the education sector and exists mainly for the unemployed in the employment sector. Employers, people living in rural areas and disadvantaged adults in general have the most difficulties in accessing services. Policy expectations for career guidance, especially in the employment sector, are not matched by the quantity and quality of resources provided by government for such services and programmes. The public is rarely consulted in the development of policies for career guidance provision and in the design of services, despite the personal nature of such services. The use of customer feedback on career guidance provision is greatly underdeveloped in many countries, again despite the personal nature of such services, but some good examples of service and product codesigning are emerging. Ethical codes for career practitioners exist in countries with long-established career guidance systems but few provide advice to practitioners on how to deal with dilemmas arising from active labour market policies at the customers’ level. The general status and standing of the codes themselves are questionable.Author Biographies
John McCarthy
has been working primarily in the education policy field:
- Policy Developer at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture focussing on Lifelong Learning.
- Chair of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Lifelong Guidance.
- Country policy reviewer for career guidance for the OECD and for the European Training Foundation (ETF).
- Consultancy and training activities in five continents in areas such as national strategies for career guidance provision, higher/tertiary education policy, secondary education policy, education to labour market transitions, adult guidance, the training of guidance practitioners, quality assurance of career guidance services, and information technology and career guidance.
- Consultant to the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network.
- Keynote addresses at many international conferences and at national symposia/conferences.
- -Co-editor of Career guidance: a handbook for policy makers, a joint European Commission-OECD publication.
- Author of The Skills, Training and Qualifications of Guidance Workers, an OECD International Policy Review Expert Paper.
- Co-author of Establishing and Developing Lifelong Guidance National Policy Forums for CEDEFOP, an agency of the European Commission for the development of Vocational Education and Training.
Bors Pecze
is Senior Employment and Career Guidance Policy Adviser in Budapest. Also Associate Professor (habilitated University Docent) at the John Wesley Theological College, honorary Associate Professor of Andragogy at the Budapest-based Milton Friedman private Applied University and at the state University of Szeged, Department of Labour and Social Law. Senior Lecture at the University of ELTE and Semmelweis University. He is currently the Vice-President of the Hungarian Pedagogical Society, Chair of the Career Education Division, former board member of the IAEVG and current members ICCDPP board, International Fellow of the UK based NICEC.
