A solid set of employment support services to job seekers has emerged on the political agenda recently in Georgia. Some recent youth surveys studying education to work transitions, found that most of the youth respondents had never received career education or career counselling. The Government of Georgia seems to have come up with a vision of how a national career development support system should be organized and launched a number of systemic programmes. However, to what extent do Georgians have access to quality career guidance in a life-long perspective? No comprehensive data is collected and exists to answer the question, however, a recent ETF review of the national career development support system, following a participatory consultation process to develop a review report, brings important evidence of the state of policies and services in a system view to the attention of all relevant stakeholders.
Key review findings
In 2019 Law on Employment Support was adopted and employment support system was consolidated under the newly established State Employment Support Agency (SESA)[1], who is responsible to cover all age groups of registered job seekers, a broad definition which might cover practically everybody. The only precondition for eligibility to the services, is the registration on the official state www.worknet.gov.ge platform as a jobseeker. With 12 service centres (out of them 5 located in Tbilisi), SESA has ambitious plans to cover this wide target group.
The development of employment-related services started in 2012, when employment-related functions came under the remit of the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs (now MIDPLHSA) and its Social Services Agency. The service model in place originated within the Concept on Professional Consultation and Career Planning adopted in 2014 and the ‘new Service Model’ introduced by the EU Budget Support Project, which has been further developed over the past 7 years.
Currently, SESA provides career guidance to job-seekers covering both employment support (registration in a job-seekers database, informing on career opportunities, profiling, competency assessments, career guidance and counselling, training/retraining, career education, as well as vacancy analysis and support with recruitment services for employers) and mediated employment (job mediation, salary subsidies, internships, labour migration).
The other subsystems of career development support system are the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) (and schools, VET colleges and universities within the education system); and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth (MoCSY), and its Youth Agency. Moreover, labour market information (LMI) is created under the Labour Market Information System (LMIS) division under the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development (MoESD).
In general education, career education is supposed to be provided in a cross-curricular manner throughout the primary, lower and upper secondary education levels (which are called ‘basic education’ and ‘secondary general education’ respectively in the Georgian education system) and is also included within the so-called ‘class teacher hour’. Career education has a few learning outcomes dedicated to studying the labour market, self-awareness and making career choices and is supposed to be taught by subject teachers[2]. The class teacher hour is a programme delivered by the class head teacher and includes working with students at least once a fortnight at primary level and at least once a month at lower and upper secondary level. However, the curriculum remains greatly unimplemented, considering that neither the teachers have qualifications, nor school resources to effectively provide career education.
There are some good practices of career education at school level though. USAID primary education GePriEd program introduced novel practices for effective carrier education for the age groups 6-9. Some 25 % of schools are covered by the MoES programme ‘Vocational Skills Development Among Pupils’[3]. The programme aims to improve professional orientation of general education school students at grades 8 and 9 by offering a mix of services, mostly through short-term vocational training offered at school. Within the framework of the programme, 200 short-term courses were implemented in 2017, 348 in 2018 and 590 in 2019. By 2020, the number of schools covered by the programme was up to 700.
At the vocational and higher education levels, having career guidance services at colleges and universities is a requirement under the relevant authorisation standards. Each institution, therefore, has career guidance specialists and provides basic career guidance services, mostly related to employer relations, internships and job placements, outreach to potential students and conducting tracer studies with recent graduates.
The Youth Agency, an institution currently within the remit of the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth is responsible for youth under 29. The services here cover the following components: key competencies training provided to youth through various programmes (summer schools and camps, hobby centres, etc.), as well as a career information portal (www.myprofession.gov.ge) which was launched in 2015 as an online alternative to career guidance services targeting youth. The portal needs to be further developed to allow meaningful contribution to career guidance. The recently adopted Concept on Youth Policy[4] provides for the creation of a youth worker institute,[5]further development of the online career planning platform and improving access and equal opportunities for employment for youth.
As in the case of myprofession.gov.ge, other sources of labour and career information are weakly targeting the potential beneficieries. The Labour Market Information System, currently coordinated by a division under the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development (MoESD) operates a labour market portal (www.lmis.gov.ge) that collects information on labour market and educational/training opportunities from mostly labour market surveys administered by the division, the State Statistics Service (Geostat) and the MoES. The MoES runs an education information portal (www.vet.ge), which provides data and search engine on formal vocational education and training opportunities in Georgia. Both portals lack functionality and detail to assist users’ with carrier choices.
As already visible from previous passages, intensive work is put in policy design and strategic planning at national level. Limited, but stable public funding is also guaranteed. However, all stakeholders agree, that there is lack of systemic approaches and coordination to having career development support services available at life-long perspective. The roles and responsibilities of many public and private actors are not clearly delineated to ensure access, quality, and needs-based services for all. Hopefully, next the few years will see the basic employment program transformed into systemic structural accessible services to all age groups in line with their needs.
[1] An agency under the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs (MIDPLHSA)
[2] MoES, 2016, National Curriculum 2018-2024.
[3] 2019 Implementation Report of the Unified Strategy of Education and Science (USES), 2020, MoES.
[4] Concept Paper on Youth Policy for 2020-2030, 2020, Parliament of Georgia.
[5] Following relevant EU, European Council and UN documents, youth work in Georgia is defined social and educational practices delivered at community level aiming at youth development and well-being. Their active participation and integration in the society, including developing key skills for life through informal education (hobby centres, mass sports, cultural-creative clubs and summer schools) (abstracted from the Concept of Youth Policy, 2020, Parliament of Georgia, Draft State Youth Strategy 2025, the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth, forthcoming).
thanks a lot, Thea, and please note that the review is the starting point not and end in itself!
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