The GUIDING SCHOOLS project will foster and booster the strategic and crucial role that schools shall play in the great challenge of preparing new generations of students for their future careers. Schools have to provide each student with the "career management skills" (CMS) that all citizens will need to design and manage their own career and lifelong learning pathways. Therefore, to have a quality career learning system is becoming one of the most important assets for schools to prevent and reduce Early School Leaving (ESL) and students' disengagement in education and in employment (NEET). The main idea of the GUIDING SCHOOLS project is to to build consistent career guidance systems based on a shared CMS framework and involving best skills and resources, within and outside each school (local career services, employers, professional bodies, local authorities, data providers, experts, Universities, charities). The project will provide schools with a comprehensive kit of guidelines and tools to design and carry out quality systems for improving career services at school, open to each students and also using best digital resources. Through a Participatory Action Research more than 240 teachers will be involve directly, locally and internationally, in the development and piloting of the GUIDING SCHOOLS quality framework and of the digital supporting tools. The quality framework is usefull for all schools to monitor and assess the activities and information resources that have a strong impact on career learning (for example, working related learning, learning on the job, workshops, study visits, meeting with employers, job days and study fairs) but that are not always designed to address career learning goals and to evaluate learning outcomes and benefits. Furthermore, quality of career guidance is one of the European priority in this field (see ELGPN 2014 and Resolution 2008 on Lifelong Guidance). The effectiveness of career guidance is crucial for many reasons and strategic issues, to reduce early school leaving, to improve career choices, to foster smooth transitions from education to work and to high education, to reduce redundant costs and allocate resources more effectively. This project proposes an innovative pathway at international level, based on the action research methodology, to define, test and implement: 1. - a quality framework for career learning at school (IO1), based on the European approach of Career Management Skills. 2. - a self-assessment tool online (IO2), to check, identify and address the gaps and improve the weakest areas of the career guidance system of each school. It will support schools to play an active role in the definition and the implementation of the main aspects of the quality framework, including skills of teachers, education resources, career information and guidance models. 3. - a new e-learning platform for teachers (IO3), for empowering the community of teachers and school staff to implement the quality system and to support and help students in the complex task of career planning and development. 4. - a integrated e-guidance platform (IO4), to provide schools with an effective career guidance system, based on the model of CMS and powered through accessible digital tools, webinar and video interviews devices, video-tutorials, career software and career information resources. The GUIDING SCHOOLS project is promoted by the University of Bari (IT), as leader of an international consortium that includes qualified partners from 7 countries, engaged in the field of career guidance and new technolgies, and schools, motivated to improve their own national career learning systems. The main objectives of the project are: - to share internationally and implement locally a common CMS framework; - to design and develop internationally a Quality framework for Career Guidance at School and related tools in 8 languages (English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Macedonian, Franch and German); - to boost the role and the skills of teachers in order to help them provide Career Learning and Guidance at School. The main target groups are: - 240 teachers from 120 schools in 7 Countries; - 400 students; - 160 local and national stakehoders in the field of education and career guidance.
The main aim we wanted to achieve was to build a comprehensive theoretical and methodological framework on quality in career guidance which could be adapted to different national contexts. Through the pilot actions carried out in each national contexts guided by the outcomes we developed and provided to schools and to practioners we wished to track a possible pathway to align practices in career guidance inspiring decision makers and policy makers at a local, national and european level. The label we chose for the project - Guiding Schools - already hinted to this aim we had. We wished to make schools who participated to the pilot action a drive for change and innovation in the field.
We started from a previous experience. In 2018, Prof. Ronald Sultana, one of the world experts in guidance, wrote a handbook to help secondary schools enhance quality of their guidance services. The handbook travelled all over the world. Starting from that, we have conducted a participatory research to build a comprehensive quality framework which has been adapted to different national contexts. To reach this first aim we have conducted national and international focus groups to gather needs and points of view from different perspectives by multinformant stakholders. Starting from the needs and views of the stakeholders, we then developed a set of tools to empower teachers, schools and policy maker and help them improve the career guidance provision. A specific digital tool was also created for the students.