About Career Information and Guidance

Effective career information and guidance systems are a key to making lifelong learning a reality for all. They can help to make the best use of human resources in the labour market as well as in education by allowing better matches between people's skills and interests and available opportunities for work and learning. They are important elements in active labour market policies and active welfare to work policies.

For all of these reasons the OECD's Education Committee and its Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee endorsed a review of policies for career information, guidance and counselling services in autumn 2000. How can access to these services be greatly expanded: without compromising their quality or placing an undue burden upon public expenditure? How can their organisation, funding, management and delivery help to advance important public policy goals such as lifelong learning?

Fourteen OECD countries have indicated an interest in taking part in the review: Australia; Austria; Canada; the Czech Republic; Denmark; Finland; Germany; Ireland; Korea; Luxembourg; the Netherlands; Norway; Spain; and the United Kingdom. Each country is completing a detailed national questionnaire, and will be visited by a small review team. With the approval of participating countries, the completed questionnaires and the review teams reports will be included on this site as they become available.

An analytical meeting to consider the review's findings was held in Germany in September 2002, and a policy dissemination conference was held in summer 2003 following publication of the review's final report. The review is being conducted in close co-operation with the European Commission, the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance and the Canadian Career Development Foundation, (whose Second International Symposium on Career Development and Public Policy, held in Vancouver in March 2001, was planned in close co-operation with the review).

Back to the home page for the Career Guidance Policy Review