Page 33 - Professionalising-career-guidance-practitioner-competences-and-qualification-routes-in-Europe

non-school workplaces, tends to leave school counsellors ill-equipped to address career
issues.
In recent years, and notably responding to the public-policy attention paid to career
guidance within the European Union, short-term in-service training in guidance has
undergone considerable growth. In Bulgaria, about a thousand people have been trained
through a 120-hour programme leading to the global career development facilitator (GCDF)
accreditation. About 80 % of these are school-based staff (see case study on Bulgaria in
Section 4.2.).
Some teachers in Romania have been able to access a GCDF accreditation programme
in their country, also based on a 120-hour course. The minimum entry requirement is
completion of first-cycle higher education; emphasis is also placed on supervised
experience, which is attested by a work supervisor to form part of the portfolio for GCDF
accreditation. In addition, a lower level of input has been applied more widely across
Romania. A new guidance and counselling hour has replaced the previous tutorial hour in all
secondary-level schools. To implement this compulsory change, with complex new material
to be covered, tutors and counsellors were required to attend a three-day training event.
• Three sets of professional standards have been developed in Estonia. During 2005-08
three Estonian public universities were piloting the first joint training programme (12
ECTS) for career counsellors, career information specialists and career coordinators at
schools within the framework of the career services project funded through ESF.
Altogether 55 career specialists were trained.
In Latvia, the development of training for careers teachers (a 72-hour course) was
coordinated with the development of a model syllabus for secondary-school students,
encompassing self-exploration, career exploration and the development of career
management skills. Training will have reached nearly 5 400 teachers by 2008, and
increasingly offers teachers access to Internet-based tools and to further professional
development, including progression to master’s level (see case study on Latvia in
Section 4.5.).
The OECD review (2004) raised concerns that combining responsibility for career
guidance with other occupational roles within schools leads to careers work being accorded
low priority, and to difficulty for people in identifying what career guidance service they could
access. Such concerns have stimulated debate in a number of countries. Significant change
has occurred mainly in those countries which have moved the main responsibility for career
guidance to separate units, as in Denmark, or have separated school-based specialisations
so that career counselling is a separate strand from personal and social counselling, as in
Norway. There has also been some sharpening of focus and improvement in the quality of
service in those countries which have considerably raised the qualification level for
school-based staff, such as Finland. Where training courses include career practitioners from
both school and non-school settings, as in Malta (see Section 2.3. above) and also in
Iceland, a wider perspective on the role of career guidance may develop.
In other cases, shorter but focused training, as provided by the GCDF-accredited course,
may offer considerably greater coverage of career issues than longer but less specialised
courses. This focused training varies, exceeding 120 hours in the GCDF programme in

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