Call for 'life career' skills to be taught in primary school

Many European countries are restructuring their school-based guidance services to bring them more in line with the needs of a "learning society", according to Ronald Sultana's report.

He found that whereas guidance services are still mostly offered during the last years of compulsory schooling, there is a clear trend to extend the service to all grades of lower and upper secondary school.

This means it would no longer be concentrated so much at a time when students are making choices on subject clusters, but would become more "developmental" in nature. In Finland, for example, students are now entitled to access to guidance services throughout their secondary education.

Prof. Sultana gives other examples of "interesting practice" in his report. In Denmark, municipalities are legally obliged to make contact with young people who are not in education and to offer them guidance at least twice a year up to the age of 19, as part of a drive to tackle school drop-out and eventually have 90 to 95 per cent of all young people finish upper secondary education.

In Germany, exploratory visits to enterprises are an integral part of vocational orientation in schools everywhere. Preparation for workplace visits generally takes place during key vocational lessons, but they also feature in other subjects such as chemistry, physics, German or geography. Practical placements last between one and three weeks.

Malta is not without its own examples of good practice. One of them is the Scoops (school cooperatives) initiative, in which students run, manage and market their own creative projects. This teaches secondary school students about work in an experiential manner, complementing "other aspects of work education provided across the curriculum in such subjects as social studies, religion, home economics, and personal and social education".

However, Prof. Sultana laments the general absence in European schools of guidance services at primary level.

"It has been argued that the skills required to manage a 'life career' in a learning society, as well as the personal stance that needs to be adopted, needs to be inclucated early on in schooling."

Such skills, he says, include knowing how to manage one's own learning - the ability to identify learning needs and the knowledge of the resources available, where to get information and advice, and how to take opportunities that further "life goals". Guidance has much to offer in this area, he argues.

"Few European countries, however, reported the presence of formally established guidance services at 'primary' school."