Benefits

The benefits can be divided into two main categories: the economic benefits of the efficient use of the workforce, and the social benefits of equality of opportunity.

The key rationale for the relationship between career guidance and public policy is that career guidance is a public good as well as a private good. It is designed to be of value to the individuals who experience it. But it also yields benefits to the wider society and economy.

These benefits can be divided into two main categories (Watts, 1996).

• The first is economic efficiency in the allocation and use of human resources. For example, career guidance services can support the individual decisions through which the labour market operates, can reduce some of its market failures, and can support reforms designed to improve its normal functioning (Killeen, White & Watts, 1992). Furthermore, such services are an important mechanism for linking learners to education and training programmes that meet their needs and inspire their motivations, thus reducing drop-out and improving learning performance. Beyond this, career guidance services link education and training programmes to the labour market, optimising the economic yield from governments’ substantial investment in these systems.
• The second benefit is social equity in access to educational and vocational opportunities. Career guidance services can raise the aspirations of individuals experiencing disadvantage, whether as a result of gender, ethnicity, social class background, or disabilities. They can make such individuals aware of opportunities and support them in securing access to these opportunities. They can also reduce social exclusion, both by helping people to avoid such exclusion and by supporting those currently excluded to gain access to education, training and the labour market.

Priorities

The goals that policy makers pursue focus upon the economic, workforce and social benefits of guidance.

Recent reviews of career guidance policies conducted by OECD (2004), the European Commission (Sultana, 2004) and the World Bank (Watts & Fretwell, 2004) indicate that the policy goals which policy-makers expect career guidance services to address can be divided into three categories (for a synthesis of these reviews, see Watts & Sultana, 2004).

The first are learning goals. These include:

• supporting lifelong learning (for both youth and adults) and the development of human resources to support national and individual economic growth
• supporting a more flexible education and training system
• supporting a stronger but more flexible vocational orientation within the school system
• improving the efficiency of education and training systems by reducing drop-out rates and increasing graduation rates
• strengthening linkages between education/training systems and the labour market

The second are labour market goals. These include:

• improving labour market efficiency
• reducing mismatch between supply and demand
• addressing skill shortages
• improving labour adaptability in response to market conditions, in terms of both geographical and occupational mobility
• reducing the extent and duration of unemployment
• minimising individual dependency on income-support systems

The third are social equity goals. These include:

• supporting equal opportunities in relation to education and employment
• addressing the needs of disadvantaged and marginalised groups
• supporting the social integration of ethnic minorities
• supporting female labour-market participation
• addressing gender segmentation in the labour market

The balance between and within these categories fluctuates and varies across countries. A challenge for all countries is to maintain an appropriate balance between them in the provision of services.  These goals are currently being reframed in the light of policies relating to lifelong learning, linked to active labour market policies and the concept of sustained employability. The result is that countries increasingly recognise the need to expand access to career guidance so that it is available not just to selected groups like school-leavers and the unemployed, but to everyone