• Establishing new institutions and enhancing the functioning of career guidance
institutions existing;
• Expanding partnerships through involving all the institutions concerned, the social
partners, NGOs, and the general public;
• Accessibility and quality of services;
• Personnel training and qualification.3.2 estonia
The recent survey has proven that the need for career guidance in Estonian society is
clearly evident, with information about labour market opportunities being the most required.
However, almost half of those potentially needing career guidance do not consider the serv-
ice sufficiently available for them. Large amount of career-related information and guidance
is received from informal channels, most frequently from friends, acquaintances, Internet
and public media.
Increasing the awareness of services as well as of service providers and, through that,
improving the image of career guidance service in general, is of key importance in the com-
ing years. As to availability of service then guidance is mainly provided to 2-3 target groups
with the main content being the exchange of information concerning training and studying
opportunities, vacations and professions.
At the same time, the provision of career guidance services is the main activity or part of it
for only 58% of service providers. For the rest, it is an additional activity, which is in most
cases unpaid.
3.3 France
At lower secondary school level, pupils are too often shifted to vocational education as a
penalty for not being able to succeed in general education. Entering vocational education
is not, in most cases, a personal deliberate choice. This affects vocational student’s self-
esteem and motivation.
Another problem perceived is that Career education suffers from a lack of consideration in
secondary education. This can be explained by the fact that most teachers involved in ca-
reer education did not themselves receive the specific training needed to perform that duty.
They therefore tend to consider career education as a second-rate subject. In addition, ca-