Page 136 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

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

activities, in both formal and informal settings. Additionally, there is the danger of
proposing a separate CMS curriculum in the education sector; this could suggest
that schools are otherwise ill-equipped to prepare students for life. Moreover,
there is a need to strike a balance between the work and life-focused facets of
the CMS concept. A ‘life-wide approach’ might dilute the CMS concept, placing it
mainly under the school personal and social development curriculum, which
traditionally has over-emphasised the personal psychological dimension of one’s
development to the detriment of the work-related dimension.
As well as the conceptual tensions around the CMS philosophy, EU
members are faced with practical challenges. First, the CMS philosophy
represents a multi-dimension approach to career guidance, requiring integration
of information resources, learning providers, expertise, systems and tools
(Sultana, 2009a). Further, although training is not always required to teach CMS,
there is growing recognition of the importance of relevant teacher training.
Matching the scarce supply with the high demand for CMS and providing young
people at risk with access to CMS services are significant challenges. Due
attention also needs to be paid to the difficulties of inserting CMS courses or
themes in a crowded curriculum and of making sure students are intrinsically
motivated to acquire career management competences.
There is still a lack of continuity between the CMS programmes in the two
settings. In the labour market, the public employment service has mainly focused
on helping the unemployed with immediate job decisions. Therefore, their CMS
programmes often tend to have a short-term horizon, customised to target groups
(in particular, those at risk), and not necessarily linked to the CMS learned at
school (Sultana, 2009a). This approach reflects the ‘curative’ perspective on
CMS, while schools tend to take a more ‘preventive’ approach to CMS.
Another differentiating element is the amount of time allocated to CMS
activities across the EU countries, varying from four hours per year to two hours
per week in school settings and from four to two hundred hours in PES settings.

6.4.2. Access to career information centres
Career information centres have the potential to help young people overcome a
range of education and employment-related challenges and produce a range of
personal benefits. Their potential advantages also include the possibility of their
services having closer links to the labour market, the likelihood that career
guidance will have a clear identity, and the increased possibility that guidance will
be independent of the interests of the education institution (OECD, 2004a).
Nevertheless, establishing a multi-agency service partnership does not happen

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