To what extent is funding devolved  to regions and to institutions?

In a number of countries, there has been a trend towards the devolution of public employment services, including career guidance services, to regional administrations. This is usually part of a wider political process of devolution, to take account of cultural and other differences across the country. This is the case in Canada and Spain, for example (OECD, 2004). It is also the case in some central and eastern European countries that were formerly part of the Communist bloc: in such countries, ‘decentralisation tends to be particularly attractive as an antidote to a heritage of tight central control, and as a mechanism to diffuse power that had previously been in the hands of a few’ (Sultana, 2004, p.85).

In most countries, university budgets are devolved to individual institutions, which have a high degree of autonomy in determining how these budgets are deployed. In some countries, too, there has been a policy of devolving school budgets from local authorities to individual schools, allowing schools more scope for self-management.

What are the implications of devolved funding?

Devolution of public employment services can lead to a number of difficulties. In particular, it can lead to costly overlap, lack of co-ordination within and across sectors, inequities in access to services across regions, and an overall degeneration in standards (Sultana, 2004). In Poland, for example, the decentralisation policy has meant that employment offices have tended to function in isolation from one another, to be under-financed and to suffer from a high turnover of staff; and maintenance of national labour market information sources has been threatened (Watts & Fretwell, 2004). This raises the issue of whether, within such policies, some responsibilities should be retained at national level. In Canada, for instance, the national government retains responsibility for national labour market information and for some special programmes (OECD, 2004).

The risk of variation in the extent and nature of services is even greater in the case of devolution of educational funding to institutions. Some managers of educational institutions may see career guidance services as being very important for the institution and its students; some may not. Moreover, such decisions may be heavily influenced by institutional considerations, which may or may not correspond with the interests both of the individual and of the wider society. This is particularly the case, for example, where the overall funding of institutions is linked to their performance on measures relating to inputs (the number of students they recruit) or short-term outputs (e.g. examination results) rather than to process measures or longer-term outcome measures. Unless, in such cases, career guidance services are seen as aiding such performance, they may be given little institutional attention or support.

Illustrative policy responses

A number of policy responses have been adopted by governments to avoid such risks.

• One is staffing formulas: in Australia (New South Wales), for example, formal provision is made for the allocation of a full-time-equivalent careers adviser in each school. Another is legislative entitlements, supported by inspectorate arrangements: this is the approach that has been adopted in England.
• A further approach, used in the case of Finnish tertiary institutions for example, is for the annual financial contracts with central government to require plans for the improvement and promotion of guidance services.
• Yet another approach is to use local accountability mechanisms: in Canada (Ontario), for instance, all school principals are required to develop a comprehensive written guidance and career education programme plan; in addition, they are required every three years to conduct a survey of students, parents, teachers and other partners to evaluate the delivery and effectiveness of all components of the programme (OECD, 2004, chps.8 and 3).