Challenges for career guidance in small states

Abstract

Between 2000 and 2005, five key surveys and reviews of career guidance were carried out by the OECD, the World Bank, and the European Commission (through the European Training Foundation, CEDEFOP, and most recently DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities). These comprehensive studies portray the state of provision of guidance services in some 37 countries in Europe and beyond, identifying the main trends, the key challenges, as well as the policy options that are available to meet these challenges. One major theme concerns the fact that while career guidance, as a public service, presumes a high degree of cooperation between different ministries and other stakeholders at a national level, in many cases such cross-sectoral collaboration is either weak or missing. The surveys in fact found little collaboration between and within education and labour market sectors and little stakeholder involvement in policy and systems development. This was seen as a significant obstacle to the development of existing guidance provision, to support lifelong learning policies and strategies. In response to such findings, and on the advice of the Commission's Expert Group on Lifelong Guidance – which was established in late 2002 to support policy development taking into account the guidance review findings – the Ministers of Education of the EU passed a Resolution on strengthening guidance throughout life (2004), highlighting the need to reinforce co-ordination and structures for policy and systems development at national level, involving a broad range of stakeholders, and to increase European co-operation in the field. Projects to develop European networks of national guidance forums were proposed by the Commission to Member States in 2003 in the context of the Joint Actions 2004 programme. These projects would test the value of and prepare foundations for a future thematic network for lifelong guidance (European forum) in the context of the post 2007 EU programmes and initiatives. Two pilot projects were selected. The first was led by the Guidance Council, UK and included Malta, Estonia, Denmark, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and Ireland (hence 'MEDSUI'). The second was led by Steiriche Volkswirtschaftliche Geselschaft, Austria and included Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Finland, Germany and Poland. The main aim of the MEDSUI project was to develop strategic plans for a national forum in each of the countries participating in the initiative. A number of sub-projects looked at various aspects related to the development of forums, the success factors underpinning the functioning of forums, the challenges they face, the nature of co-operation between partners, and an analysis of case studies of partnership. One of the sub-projects looked specifically at the advantages of 'scale' or country size in developing cross-sectoral collaboration in service provision. The present study builds on that focus to consider the challenges for career guidance in small states more broadly.