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Career Guidance - Estonia
Source: Rajaleidja
In 1990, the places of school psychologists were created at general education institutions. Many of these school psychologists also provide careers counselling services. Today they use mostly personality-centred humanistic counselling methods that help young people to determine their current situation: their aptitudes, personal characteristics and vocational orientations. Assistance is likewise offered to students in discovering their development potential and inner resources. The core nature of counselling has shifted: co-operation and communication between the client and the counsellor have come to replace formerly dominant testing and information provision. Due to the rapid changes in the society, increasing importance is being attached to the counsellors' counselling skills, as the practitioners are more and more often forced to deal with the clients' motivation, identity, self-esteem and socialisation problems. Young people have become more active, their freedom of choice as well as responsibility have grown considerably. While choosing the future profession, its economic, social and psychological aspects are taken into consideration.
However, the national resource centre, i.e. the Estonian Centre of Careers Guidance that had been created in 1987, and coordinated career planning activities in the country, was dissolved in 1993 by the decree of the Minister of Education, and this lead to the gradual perishing of the system.
The Education Act of the Republic of Estonia (RT I 1996, 51, 965) stipulates in § 7 vocational guidance of children and youth to be the responsibility of local self-governments. According to the Youth Work Act (RT 1999, 27, 392) § 5, the county governor has to organise guidance and counselling of young people in the county by contracting respective institution or specialist. Within the framework of the Criminal Prevention Programme, the Ministry of Education supported the foundation of 16 regional Careers Guidance and Counselling Centres in years 1999/2000 with premises and equipment (including 1 computer). Further support of these centres, however, has been meagre, and their co-ordination scarce.
The last years of the 1990s saw the establishment of several new structures of vocational counselling. The inter-school training centres in major cities have their own psychology services whose priority is vocational counselling. The Estonian Youth Work Centre, working under the Ministry of Education, helps to put into practice several national and self-initiative programmes and projects in the field of youth work. The Centre offers young people information, counselling and training, organises annual information fair "Teeviit", deals with topics of cultural history etc.
Several Estonian universities have established career centres to provide services for their students and graduates. The principal aim of these centres is to act as a bridge between the worlds of study and work, and to assist students in their career planning activities in general. This is achieved through job mediation and company presentations, personal counselling and advice, development of students' job-hunting skills, and various other careers-related lectures, seminars and workshops. Additional information is at some centres provided on international exchange programmes, funds and grants.
A number of foreign programmes have reached Estonia as well. In years 1997 - 1998, for example, the Careers Centre of the Open Estonia Foundation introduced some careers guidance programmes to Estonia. Within their framework hundreds of teachers and school psychologists from all across Estonia received training.
Several organisations have been financed through the aid and co-operation programmes of the European Union. The National Observatory was founded to collect, analyse and disseminate education and labour market related information. In the autumn of 1998, the National Rescource Centre for Vocational Guidance (Euroguidance Estonia) was established within the Foundation Vocational Education and Training Reform in Estonia. The aim of the network of the named centres is to promote mobility and to enhance the European dimension in careers guidance and counselling.
In June 2001, the careers counsellor occupational standard, developed by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was affirmed. In fall 2001, the Ministry of Education is still in the process of adapting the draft of the career counsellors' training programme to the named qualification standard. The preliminary structure of this programme was developed in close collaboration with Professor Joachim Ertelt from Mannheim University, Germany. First modules are planned to be delivered to guidance practitioners from the educational and the labour market structures in December 2001.
Labour Market Careers Guidance
Under the Ministry of Social Affairs, largely psychology-based vocational counselling has been provided at employment offices since mid-1990s, although initially there was no respective legislation to regulate the services. The initiative for creating the counsellors' jobs came from the ground level - from the regional employment offices where the necessity for this kind of activities was felt acutely. There were several objective reasons for this. Rapid changes of economy brought along the emerging of new professions, which required new qualifications and created the need for retraining and in-service training. The obligation to find one's way on the rapidly changing labour market, the ability to assess ones potential and resources for finding work, and readiness to take decisions became evident for many people of working age.
Vocational guidance and counselling services in the second half of the 1990s were available only in major centres, and they were provided with a strong inclination towards psychology. No counselling related statistics was collected and no essential analysis was carried out.
The Labour Market Services Act that came into force on October 1, 2000, deemed vocational counselling to be a labour market service as stipulated by the law. 12 new vocational counsellor jobs were created. Today vocational guidance and counselling is offered by all employment offices across Estonia, although the smaller counties have only 0.5 counselling jobs each. The vocational guidance counsellor's job requires higher education. There are 16 counsellors working within the system, 14 of whom are psychologists. It is intended to organise in-service training for counsellors, as well as to develop uniform methodological instruments (tests, excercise-books instructing how to seek work and plan the career) and necessary information materials.
The right to receive vocational counselling services within the labour market sector is allocated to the unemployed, to persons who have received notice about the termination of their employment contract, and to official job seekers who have registered themselves at employment offices.
People eligible to receive vocational counselling are those who:
Vocational counselling is carried out both as individual work as well as in group sessions. In the course of counselling the careers guidance counsellor helps to specify the educational and job related aspirations of the person seeking work, to map the existing qualifications and those that need further development, to assess professional suitability and to take decisions in making vocational, educational and work related choices. The vocational counsellor also provides instructions for finding a job.
In 1998, the Labour Market Board purchased some methodological instruments, i.e. tests (Holland vocational preferences questionnaire, General Aptitude Test Battery GATB, Myers-Briggs Test Inventory MBTI - test for the determination of behavioural and communications preferences) for the vocational counsellors, working at that time within the system. These tests are still in use today.
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