Page 63 - increasing-the-value-of-age-guidance-in-employers-age-management-strategies

Increasing the value of age: guidance in employers’ age management strategies

different points of departure, depending on historical, political, economic, and
cultural forces.
Information collected at country level indicates that recognition of prior
learning and accreditation of prior experiential learning have already been
implemented in several countries, but that the progress achieved otherwise
varies from promising initiatives to little progress made in a few countries. Three
basic modalities for the organisation of RPL procedures can be identified:
(a) integrated RPL procedures in the formal system;
(b) RPL procedures parallel to the formal system;
(c) open RPL procedures (Broek et al., 2010).

The Council of the EU has given a new boost to the development of
validation systems across Europe, by adopting the new recommendation on the
validation of non-formal and informal learning in 2012 (Council of the European
Union, 2012). This documents prompts national States to implement, no later
than 2018, systems which allow for the validation of knowledge and experience
obtained via non-formal processes.
While acknowledging the need to adapt these systems to national and local
contexts, the recommendation clearly defines four stages for validation: the
identification of the acquired knowledge and skills, the documentation of these
learning outcomes, their assessment, and certification of the assessment results,
in the form of a qualification. The identification and assessment stages are
particularly supported by guidance methodologies and require intervention by
trained professionals, to be entirely successful.
The recommendation also stresses the active role of employers and trade
unions in supporting the development and successful operation of the validation
systems, given their access to workplace contexts. The results from the Cedefop
study on validation of skills in European enterprises highlight specificities of these
systems, when confronted with the more general national public validation
systems (Cedefop, forthcoming).

4.4. Access to guidance for older workers
Career guidance is still highly fragmented, and overall national strategies are
often lacking, especially in the context of active ageing. The lack of national
policies to assure career guidance on the in the workplace limits the access to
such.
Access to guidance in most countries is provided by external actors, such as
public employment services and VET schools, but these are generally focused on

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