Page 119 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

Guiding at-risk youth through learning to work
Lessons from across Europe

plus vocational training pathways incorporating an element of workbased
learning, including apprenticeships and alternation training programmes, can all
help to meet the needs of young people and prepare them for the world of work.
This section examines a range of working life familiarisation initiatives and
identifies the benefits each one can present for young people:
(a) the benefits provided by compulsory education systems that offer young
people an opportunity to undertake work experience;
(b) how careers fairs and company visits can help young people;
(c) how entrepreneurship education can offer people from disadvantaged
groups a route out of social exclusion;
(d) continuous VET reform to offer vocational training as a valued, alternative
study path;
(e) the value of apprenticeships and how to support the transition from school to
an apprentice programme;
(f) school and work alternation initiatives as an alternative study route.

6.3.1. Work experience opportunities in compulsory education
The 2004 Cedefop and OECD research projects on career guidance found that
many EU countries offer different forms of work placement opportunities (work
shadowing, company visits, work experience). As part of the secondary school
curriculum, these connect their career education programmes more directly and
experientially to the world of work (Cedefop, Sultana, 2004; OECD, 2004a;
OECD, 2004b). In Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria Finland, Sweden
and the UK (England) the curriculum for compulsory education provides
extensive work shadowing and work experience opportunities for young people
(based on a review of country reports EACEA et al., 2008). Such work
placements last approximately one week in Austria, up to two weeks in Germany,
Luxembourg, Finland and the UK (England) and can last more than two weeks in
Denmark and Sweden. The arrangements are wellestablished practices in all of
those countries apart from Austria, where such provisions were made available in
2005.
Countries such as Belgium (Walloon), Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland,
Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands and Portugal have less extensive
provision to familiarise young people with working life than those just mentioned
(OECD, 2004a). Estonia and Latvia, for instance, organise an annual ‘work
shadowing day’. Such taster days act as tools to improve young people’s
understanding of the world of work, especially in the absence of more extensive
work placement schemes.

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