2014-12-09
National Audit Office: not all school children have equal access to vocational guidance
The National Audit Office has conducted an audit to assess the organisation and implementation of school children's vocational guidance. “Vocational guidance is an important element of the education and employment policy and an integral part of the active labour market policy, so it is important that all school children have access to such services. The audit showed that so far not all pupils have equal access to vocational information, guidance, and career education services; also, the continuity and quality of vocational guidance has not been ensured,” said Auditor General Giedrė Švedienė commenting on the audit results.
The development of vocational guidance has been implemented since 2003 through a number of projects funded from the EU structural funds. Until 2010, the projects were focused on vocational information and guidance, meanwhile since 2010 more attention has been paid to career education. To this end, a project “Creation and development of career education and monitoring models in general education and vocational training” was launched to develop self-understanding and career planning skills in children and young people. However, career specialists were employed for two academic years only in schools with more than 100 pupils, so pupils of smaller rural schools (about 25 per cent of all schools) were not provided with access to these services. In 2014, schools with 50 to 100 pupils have been given an opportunity to take part in this project for three months; smaller schools, however, have still not been provided with any vocational guidance services.
It should be noted that, pursuant to the Vocational Guidance Procedure, schools were supposed to implement the Career Education Programme since 2012; however, this Programme was approved only in 2014, so during the audited period (2010-2013) conditions were not ensured to implement career education activities throughout the country according to the same requirements.
The auditors pointed out the failure to ensure the continuity of vocational guidance. After the completion of the EU-funded project activities, municipalities and schools have to ensure that vocational guidance is available to all pupils at their own discretion. According to a survey carried out this September, 56 general education schools and 62 vocational training institutions out of 818 and 65 ones, respectively, pointed out that they will not have a career specialist in their school.
The assessment of how the quality of vocational guidance services is ensured showed that these services in schools had been provided by various school employees; however, the concept of the specialist providing vocational (career) guidance services to pupils, qualification requirements, competencies, functions, and professional activity areas of such specialist have not been defined. Also, a system for training these specialists has not been created, so there are no preconditions for their continuous improvement and for equal access of all pupils to services in the same quality. In addition, not all vocational guidance activities are subject to evaluation, and no assessment of whether or not these activities are meeting the users’ expectations and needs is carried out either; therefore, there is no sufficient basis for shaping the policy in this area, and there is a lack of information to be able to improve the quality of vocational guidance.
The National Audit Office issued recommendations to the Ministry of Education and Science to help provide for conditions for all pupils to have access to quality career education and vocational information and guidance services.