ETF Network for Excellence- VET career guidance excellence model- a tool for VET providers to ensure high quality services and processes

Career guidance describes the services which help people of any age to manage their careers and to make the educational, training and occupational choices that are right for them.[1] It helps people to reflect on their ambitions, interests, qualifications, skills and talents - and to relate this knowledge about who they are to who they might become within the labour market. Career guidance involves a range of connected activities, including: (a) provision of careers information, (b) personalised and group guidance/ counselling, (c) assessments that support self-appraisal and career exploration, (d) experiential learning and engagement with employers and (e) career education. Career guidance aims at developing career management skills enabling citizens to manage their individual life paths in education, training and work across the lifespan.

In order to better understand the needs and ambitions of its members, the ETF’s Network for Excellence (ENE) has developed the ENE self-assessment tool (ENESAT - Self-assessment for centres of vocational excellence | ETF (europa.eu)). ENESAT is currently further developed into the INTERNATIONAL SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR CENTRES OF VOCATIONAL EXCELLENCE (ISATCOVE). The excellence model for career guidance in VET, that ETF developed, meets the needs of the comprehensive and exhaustive self-assessment framework ISATCOVE and can easily be integrated into the same. Career guidance also currently is one of the core modules of the ENE self-assessment tool and therefore a key performance area for Centres of Vocational Excellence (COVEs). VET is seen by the EU as a vehicle to support inclusive and fair transitions of individuals to a digital and green economy and as core enabler of lifelong learning. Since career guidance lies at the heart of lifelong learning systems, investment in high quality career guidance is not a “nice to have” but an absolute must.

The online webinar VET Career Guidance excellence model – A tool for VET providers to ensure high quality services and processes, which was held on 14 December from 11.00 to 12.30  aimed at:

• Presenting the new ETF ENE excellence tool for career guidance in VET for COVEs;
• Sharing experience in the piloting of the tool in Armenian COVEs;
• Sharing inspirational practice about career guidance in VET relevant to COVEs.

The meeting was conducted in English on Zoom with simultaneous translation to Russian and French.

[1] Cedefop, European Commission, ETF, ILO, OECD, UNESCO (2021): Investing in career guidance: https://www.etf.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/publications/investing-career-guidance