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International government agencies and career guidance





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Summary
The OECD (International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), like many international and national organizations that have to do with economic development, believes that career guidance has an important role to promote the development of human resources in a country.
Generally, economic development agencies always recommend that career guidance services be strengthened. However, all too often they do not recognize the difficulties that the counselor faces in schools and do not give specific and clear recommendations. But they seem to believe that education or other authorities who are responsible for guidance will quickly agree and provide more resources for guidance.
In addition to the economic development agencies, the asocial and educational development agencies also make important recommendations regarding providing guidance services.
UNESCO, for example, has published two recent reports. It is interesting to compare the recommendations of UNESCO and the OECD and to note the relative strengths of each set of recommendations and imagine how they could be combined to promote changes in policies and programs.

Guidance services are at risk in several countries

There is a need for organizations such as UNESCO and the OECD to be concerned with vocational guidance and advice, because of the need to develop these services in many countries, but also to question the management of services in others.
Several countries around the world are "reorganizing" their guidance services in ways that seem to reflect political and administrative philosophies, rather than the needs of students and citizens in terms of receiving guidance and advice.
Below we give examples of administrative changes in six countries that are being made in terms of guidance services.

Country 1

The Ministry decided that vocational guidance was no longer a right of all people, but a service that should be purchased by the individual from private providers.

Country 2

The government decided to privatize the Educational and Occupational Information Resource Center and reorganize local careers guidance centers, as a result directors with orientation training have been replaced by untrained administrators.

• Counselors are now called "advisors" and are not required to adhere to accepted professional standards for guidance counselors.
• The funds given to vocational guidance services will be discontinued and users (including schools and individuals) will have to pay to obtain guidance from commercial providers.Country 3

The Ministry of Education has stopped asking for guidance to be a basic part of education and has left it to the municipal school authorities to decide if they provide that service and if it will provide it to what extent.
National coordination of guidance services has been discontinued and replaced by an optional model of services that local authorities can accept or reject.
All citizens who receive unemployment insurance and social security are asked to receive advice for employment, but labor counselors and municipal welfare offices have little or no training in orientation and career.

Country 4

The employment service that had provided advice on employment and careers to all citizens who were in the labor market or contemplating entering the labor market, decided to restrict their counseling service to those people who were receiving unemployment insurance. However, at the same time, it granted certain funds for community-based agendas, which provide this service to adults "at risk" so that they can integrate into the labor market. But most counselors from these agencies have little or no training to do this job

Country 5

Financial support for education has been reduced and guidance services in schools have been reduced more than any other educational service, and very noticeable has been the decrease of orientation consultants among municipal school authorities, leaving many counselors of schools without specialized supervision and leadership
A survey of counselors revealed that many thought, that the administrative head (such as the school principal) of their organizations did not understand the orientation, and were more critical than supportive.
These examples indicate why guidance is at risk in several countries and why others should be strongly encouraged.

OECD and UNESCO recommendations for guidance services

The conclusions and recommendations of the two agencies can be compared in several headings, as follows:

Need for guidance services

The OECD notes that the need for guidance goes largely unnoticed by many of the policy-making circles, and UNESCO describes the factors that should be considered in an analysis of guidance needs.



The orientation for the career is of interest to the Ministries responsible for Education, Labor and sometimes Social Affairs. It is important that they be encouraged to formulate a joint action plan to support the orientation and perhaps support a jointly sponsored support structure, such as that proposed by UNESCO.

Contents: Both international organizations see the need for a curriculum approach for guidance. Significantly, none described the content of the individual orientation career.



Guidance services rarely conduct an analysis of formal needs for guidance; if they did so as suggested by the ESCO, they would be more effective if they were done according to the guidelines given by the OECD.

Orientation Policy: In many jurisdictions, guidance is available as a confidential private service for students or clients who offer for this help, or who are referred by other staff members (eg teachers) for behavior or learning problems.
International organizations, both OECD and UNESCO, say that this service should be provided to all.
The OECD noted that "there is good guidance practice in all countries, but incomplete or inconsistent systems seem to be the norm." Many young people and adults who could benefit from guidance have to cope without guidance, or receive inadequate service. "Guidance is a development process that can best be achieved within a learning context such as an orientation course. Much of the time of the counselors is spent in counseling individually in crisis situations. Governments do not appreciate that advice as much as career guidance. Some institutions try to separate roles using social workers and also guidance counselors.

Jurisdictions: in some countries career guidance is legislated to be the sole responsibility of an agency (for example, the employment agency).
In other countries, several organizations provide the service, sometimes with little coordination or collaboration.
The foregoing would suggest that there is a need for counselors to define and describe the typical content of interviews to guide the careers of individuals.
It is possible that they are mainly dedicated to providing vocational and educational information; On the other hand, they can mainly resolve social and personal issues of the student.
What should administrators know about what is happening in what they consider "time-consuming conversations" between student and counselor?

 Materials: Career guidance is more than a conversation between a student and a counselor. There are interests, aptitudes and talents that must be explored and defined, there is educational and occupational information to be learned, there are job search skills that must be learned. , there is an electronic education and career information systems should be used. Therefore, the material requirements in the guidance service should not be ignored.



The budgets of career guidance services should include two broad ones to provide a complete career information center.

Supply: by looking at how career services are integrated, the OECD paid particular attention to at-risk populations, while UNESCO was concerned that all students receive at least one basic service and that careers guidance services for girls and women in Vocational and technical education, in particular, be reinforced.



The provision of guidance services is the field of evidence of good intentions. It is important that the organization of local services receive technical, financial, professional, and material support to ensure compliance with the professed objectives of this policy.

 Standards: When the standards for guidance are discussed, the themes of the counselor's ethics and if qualified, are the subjects to which preeminence is given. Considering the problems described above, which put the orientation "at risk", there are many other factors that must be addressed under this heading.
The OECD has turned the subject of the professional along with the need to carry out audits or inventories of the services.
UNESCO, for its part, has made a list of a dozen important features or brands of a quality orientation service.



Counselors, counselor educators and associations of counselors, need to establish comprehensive standards for counseling services and programs and promote to the authorities of economic, social and educational development that these standards are put into practice.

 Counselor Training: The two international organizations have affirmed the need for well-trained counselors. UNESCO has suggested some of the subjects that training should include.



Some institutions that train counselors offer training based on psychological counseling approaches, while others offer it based on an occupational psychology.
The design of training programs must take into account the scientific analysis of the needs of clients and the "corporate" skills required by counselors to deal with administrations that do not adequately appreciate the nature of the programs and guidance services.

Evaluation

Guidance services are rarely formally evaluated. Much research has been devoted to the evaluation of particular orientation techniques, processes and programs, but little attention has been given to the evaluation of a full orientation service.
It is not surprising, perhaps, that an economic development agency sees the importance of the evaluation of guidance services, for the support they get from the administration.



There is a need to develop appropriate means of evaluating counseling services as means of improving the service, but also to defend it and to promote improvements in administrations, which, as we have seen, do not always support these services.

ConclusionsGuidance counselors are pleased that international social and economic development agencies express the importance of vocational and educational guidance, for the personal and social economic benefits that it provides.
The future of many nations depends on young people and adults learning about themselves, their potential and how to achieve educational, vocational and economic objectives, which are usually intertwined. The comparison between the recommendations of an economic development agency (OECD) and an agency of social and educational development (UNESCO) lays the foundations to develop a comprehensive approach that meets the needs of students and administrators.
National governments listen to economic development agencies seeking ways to improve the economy and increase employment.
It is important for national associations of educational vocational counselors to ensure that economic development agencies gain sufficient understanding of guidance services to be able to promote reasonable, possible and specific suggestions for more intensive development of guidance services.
Finally, the associations of counselors should be the catalyst to carry out a complete and common approach, through economic, social and educational development agencies, in order to develop adequate career guidance services for students and workers to establish a culture -development of the career and lifelong learning.