This publication is a summary of the proceedings of a French Presidency of the EU conference supported by the European Commission's Directorates for Education and for Employment. The conference aimed to identify the challenges, to set out common findings, and to outline measures taken to make lifelong learning more effective. Lifelong learning was seen as at the heart of the flexicurity principle.

As you will see from the proceedings, most of the time was devoted to issues concerning initial and continuing vocational training: access by SMEs, by older, disabled, migrant, unskilled; employer or employee led;  partnerships, motivation; costs and benefits.

The importance of career guidance and counselling was underlined by Heléne Clark, director of the EC's DG for Education, and was also underlined in the French Secretary of State for Employment's discourse on training system reform.

Looking at Guidance is a report of the Guidance Inspectorate of the Department of Education and Science, Ireland. It consists of an analysis the findings of fifty-five reports on inspections of Guidance in second-level schools carried out from September 2006 to May 2007. The report comments on the quality of provision and whole-school support for Guidance, the quality of planning and preparation, the quality of teaching and learning, and the quality of assessment. The reports also draws on the outcomes of a questionnaire administered to over 1,100 students in the schools where inspections took place. The report discusses features of good practice and concerns identified in the inspections of Guidance.

This Occasional Paper, prepared by Prof Ronald Sultana for iCeGS, UK, in 2008, assesses the dynamics of international policy learning (policy lending and policy borrowing), its possible motives, and key mechanisms by which transfers of learning take place. It raises questions regarding the value and limitations of deterritorialised policy exchange, noting that career guidance practice is firmly rooted in a particular complex of values and meanings that are entwined in the social and economic environment of each country and region.

The author draws on his work experiences in Malta, Palestine and Egypt, to illustrate the way transnational and globalised agendas are reconfigured and reinterpreted at the local level.

The acquisition and development of career management skills has become an EU policy priority in the field of education and training as evidenced in the Council of Education Ministers' Resolutions on lifelong guidance (2004, 2008). This atttached extract from the UK's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority provided by www.cegnet.co.uk outlines the

-learning objectives

-possible teaching activities

-learning outcomes

for use with 17 to 19 year olds in learning settings in England.

This publication (2007) of the Department for Schools, Children and Families of the United Kingdom sets out a framework for the planning, managing and reviewing of information, advice and guidance services for young people aged 11 to 19 years. The 12 standards were developed through a lengthy consultation process and their operation tested in the north west of England. They represent a set of recommendations to to all local authorities (municipalities) and guidance and learning providers working in a coordinated way at local level.

12 standards are presented together with evidence indicators.

This briefing document outlines key features of Careers Scotland's (now part of Skills Development Scotland) Quality Asurance Framework for its services and products. It describes:

-outcomes for individuals

-service delivery standards

-guidance standards.

It provides for measures of impact on individuals at four levels of evidence:

-satisfaction

-behaviour

-learning

-results.

AFPA is the state institution in France charged with the vocational training of adults. It is unique in Europe and beyond in that it provides a professional career guidance service to trainees prior to course entry, during training and at exit. AFPA's course completion and qualifications rates are very impressive and taking into account that the people who attend their training often suffer multiple barriers to learning.

This document developed  in the last quarter of 2008 is AFPA's contribution to an ongoing debate in France about the future organisation and management of career guidance services for all of the population. It identifies some of the key issues from an AFPA perspective, describes good practices developed by its dedicated guidance services and support unit (INOIP), and  feedback from its users.