National Initiatives Concerning the Career Guidance/Information/Vocational Counselling

National Initiatives Concerning the Career Guidance/Information/Vocational Counselling - Czech Republic

One of the main tasks of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MLSA) is to create an employment policy, which would enable to enhance an employability of people. An inevitable part of provisions for strenghtening of an employability is a support to acquirement of a high qualification facilitating a finding jobs on a labour market. Therefore, Labour Offices which report to MLSA pay a lot of attention to a retraining and a requalification of job seekers and to counselling services, taking a special regard to specific groups on labour market, such as disabled people, Roma minority etc.

Pupils of basic schools and schools for children requiring special care, secondary school and university students, job seekers and other clients can benefit from the services of Labour Office Information and Advice Centres (hereinafter referred to by the Czech acronym IPS), where they can find all up-to-date information which they need when making important decisions on entering the world of labour. These centres are visited by whole school classes with their teachers, parents with children as well as individual children and young people. They organise discussions for basic school pupils faced with their first choice of occupation, as well as debates on issues connected with transition from school to employment and the possibilities of further education and training for higher-secondary school graduates.

When making a career decision, IPS clients can take use of self-service computer programmes to test their interest in a particular profession. They are provided with detailed descriptions of different professions, together with lists of the work activities involved, working tools and aids used, health requirements including adverse effects of the working environment. Videotapes with practical examples of the skills required are used to support this information. A trained staff member is always present to provide advice and assistance.

IPS clients use the software available to look up information on the network of secondary schools, universities, further vocational training and university-level institutions in their respective region and in other parts of the Czech Republic. They are provided with printed information on the requirements, and the formal aspects of the enrolment procedures, and the demands placed on the students. Information is also available on the current labour market chances of the graduates, on the possibilities of studies in foreign countries, and on short-term work opportunities.

Retraining with the purpose to equip job seekers with new qualifications and thus improve their chances of finding new employment may have the form of short-term courses, where the job seekers need to acquire additional or expand their existing skills, or of relatively long-term schemes where an essential change of qualifications is required. In these instances, theoretical as well as practical training is usually outsourced, and is delivered by employer, public and private training institutions, including foreign ones.

Furthermore, Labour Offices organise and are involved in the recruitment of participants in courses focussed on improving the employability of women and ethnic minorities. They co-operate in training Romas for work in public administration, the army and police.

They also participate in international training programmes. The share of projects presented by Labour Offices in the framework of the European Leonardo da Vinci programme is quite significant, too.

The main goal of the Pro-active Labour Market Intervention Fund (PALMIF) is to identify and finance innovative projects testing active labour market policy tools. PALMIF projects support the employment of people who are disadvantaged on the labour market and the development of their qualifications. Priority is given to retraining projects, which offer the participants a chance to acquire new skills of EU standard.

A concurrent purpose of the PALMIF programme is to test de-centralised management of regional employment projects, lying fully within the authority of Labour Offices which also bear responsibility for the effective management of the resources provided by the European Union. The experience thus acquired will be used in the future in the implementation of further programmes, especially those benefiting from the EU Structural Funds, in particular the European Social Fund.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department