EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT – THE ROLE OF CAREER MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Dr Susanne Kraatz (Seconded National Expert) EN Policy Department A: Economy and Scientific Policy in the European Parliament has produced an excellent summary report on the origins of career management skills and possible future directions (12 pages including references).

Visit: – http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/607359/IPOL_BRI(2017)607359_EN.pdf

She highlights “There exists a growing body of evidence from research that systematic and progressive career guidance programmes have a positive impact on an individual’s capacity to manage transitions, their learning performance and employment.”

KEY FINDINGS

• International policy documents (e.g. EU Council Resolution) and research point to the need to equip individuals with career management skills in order to facilitate orientation in complex education landscapes and labour markets of the 21st century. This concept shifts the focus towards learning outcomes of career interventions, i.e. the ability of an individual to identify own interests and strengths, to relate these to education pathways and the world of work, to collect relevant information, make structured educational and occupational decisions and to implement these.

• Representatives of education and labour ministries elaborated the concept and a number of tools for implementation in the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (2007-2015). Ideally, children and adolescents learn these skills as part of the school curriculum whilst career interventions at VET institutions and universities, at the workplace or in employment services could ensure that existing career competences are assessed and updated or complemented if needed.

• There exists a growing body of evidence from research that systematic and progressive career guidance programmes have a positive impact on an individual’s capacity to manage transitions, their learning performance and employment. Further, many countries have developed inspiring practices.

• Overall, policies to enhance career management skills are at a developmental or initial stage. In recent resolutions on skills policies (2015-2017), the European Parliament sets out that career guidance must be a core element of education and skills policies from an early stage.

• As way forward at European level, several lines of action could be considered: first, to include career management skills as a key competence into the European Framework of Key Competences undergoing a review, or at least to systematically integrate these; second, to foster targeted mutual exchange in an own working group in a lifelong guidance perspective and in existing European networks (e.g. Key Competences Network – KeyCoNet; ET2020 working groups, Public Employment Services network); third, to promote dedicated projects within Erasmus+ and the European Social Fund.

The report references outputs from the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN). For detailed examples of good/interested policies and practices

ELGPN Concept Note No. 3. Career Management Skills. Factors in implementing policy successfully: see Appendix for country specific examples including Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, and Portugal.

– visit: – http://www.elgpn.eu/publications/elgpn-concept-note-cms

 CAREER MANAGEMENT SKILLS CMS) policy implementation brings with it a number of challenges. This concept note aims to identify elements that support policy development and implementation in relation to CMS, as well as those that can prove to be an obstacle to policy implementation. The issues highlighted are supported by theory and experiences observed in a number of ELGPN member countries.

The concept note was commissioned by ELGPN, and supported by a reference group drawn from its members. The views expressed, however, are those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the views of ELGPN or its member-countries.

The authors are Dorianne Gravina (Malta) and Miha Lovšin (Slovenia).

In June 2018, this topic was highlighted by Cedefop as an area of significant policy interest to European Commission policy makers as discussed in the CMS blogs.