Page 69 - Guiding-at-risk-youth-through-learning-to-work-Lessons-from-across-Europe

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

dedicating resources – financial and personnel – to identify which programmes
are most effective in reducing the number of drop-outs.
Another country with a strong focus on prevention and providing guidance is
Croatia, which has adopted a holistic approach to vocational guidance and
counselling to help prevent early school leaving. Indeed, vocational guidance and
counselling is seen as a key tool to help prevent social exclusion and to identify
at risk groups of the population in the early stages of their disengagement with
the education and training system or the labour market.
Within the Croatian education and training system, vocational guidance is
administered through a step-by-step approach. A vocational intentions survey is
carried out annually among the final year pupils of primary and secondary
schools, which enables expert teams in each school to identify priority groups
who may require special attention. Support is offered in several forms, depending
on the individual’s needs (vocational guidance information, counselling, self-
assessment, etc.). Local and regional PES offices (Croatian Employment
Service, CES) also organise regular group and individual information sessions.
Parental involvement in information and decision-making is also encouraged.
Vocational guidance and counselling centres, managed by the CES, target young
people who are making decisions about their future career pathways and adults
who are changing careers (possibly because or restructuring, health issues or
personal choice).

4.3. Guidance to prevent early school leaving

The examples of guidance-oriented policies, practices and projects in this
chapter have demonstrated the numerous different approaches used to prevent
young people from disfranchising from learning. The review has also showed that
most preventive guidance policies are person-centred and that few approaches
addressing structural weaknesses have a strong element of guidance.
This section examines areas of effective practice which underpin the
approaches to supporting school completion. These include the need for early
interventions, to raise aspirations and to involve parents in the learning process.

4.3.1. Early intervention
Many of the case studies and the reviewed literature suggests that timely
intervention at school is necessary to avoid disengagement setting in, and that
the transition from primary to secondary school is often a time when many young
people start to disengage from education. Workers in secondary level schools, or

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