Page 95 - guidance-supporting-europe-s-aspiring-entrepreneurs-policy-and-practice-to-harness-future-potential

Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
Policy and practice to harness future potential

teachers. Vocational schools in many countries do not have enough resources to
help students understand the facts related to entrepreneurship.
The link between guidance and entrepreneurship is also poorly presented in
VET policies across Europe.

3.6.2. Formal guidance services
Guidance on the entrepreneurship agenda of vocational schools is evident in a
number of different ways and the role of formal career guidance services is not
as strong as that of non-formal guidance.
Guidance professionals in many countries and schools are involved in
producing material on entrepreneurship, arranging work placements and visits,
and sometimes in the development, or implementation, of entrepreneurship
education opportunities. However, in many cases the involvement of guidance
professionals is ad-hoc and they typically play a supporting, rather than leading,
role.
The study demonstrates that entrepreneurship is not covered by guidance
services in some countries/IVET institutions because many career services focus
on giving advice on employment and education opportunities, rather than on
business creation. In some cases, there is a lack of policy on promoting
entrepreneurship in vocational education while in others, this is tied to the lack of
curricula-based career guidance for IVET students. Studies indicate that, in many
European countries, career guidance tends to be more extensively provided in
academic rather than in vocational programmes (Watts, 2009), although self-
employment is the primary employment option for some VET students.
Consequently, elements of career guidance within vocational programmes need
to pay attention to specific career paths within the occupations that the
programme is designed to lead to (ibid.), including self-employment and other
forms of entrepreneurship.
There is also a great degree of consensus among stakeholders from the
Member States that many guidance practitioners working in IVET institutions do
not have the necessary competences to offer the support required by students
who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs, mainly because of limited
experience of working with students interested in becoming entrepreneurs. There
are also relatively few training programmes that seek to develop the
entrepreneurial skills of guidance professionals; instead, most opportunities are
aimed at VET teachers. Guidance professionals could benefit from targeted
training programmes.

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