Recently published by le Haut Conseil de l'Education in France, this report highlights how the organisation of education programmes and of learning opportunities in second level schools (colleges, lyceés) in France has a negative impact on young people's choices and consequently on the provision of career guidance, and how it contributes to both social reproduction and social inequities. It sets out four priorities for future actions:

• The transfer of responsibilities for guidance provision to the regions
• The redefining of the role and function of guidance
• Giving teachers a proper guidance role
• Strengthening careers education to assist pupils to make choices.

This report comprises the first comprehensive review of guidance services in second level schools (students aged 12 to 18 years) since the establishment of such services in the 1960s in Ireland. It was carried out in four parts:

1. A survey of the existing use of resources (personnel, capital) allocated for guidance in all 738 second level schools in Ireland by the Department of Education and Science
2. An in-depth survey of 260 of those schools
3. Case studies of guidance provision in 15 of those schools
4. Individual and group interviews with stakeholders (school management, parents, students, guidance counsellors).

Wide variation of experiences of guidance provision, both across schools and within schools, was reported by the stakeholders. The value of certain guidance activities was confirmed but issues of access to and resources for guidance provision were strongly emphasised by all stakeholders.

This article is a summary of the first report of Future Track, a study of 130,000 higher education applicants in the UK in 2006. Commissioned by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, the study will track these applicants for the next 6 years and on through their early careers, including unsuccessful HE applicants and also successful applicants who chose to pursue non-HE opportunities.

Some of the findings of the first report (the study is being undertaken by the Employment Studies Unit of the University of Warwick) are somewhat expected while others are not. Here is a selection:

Applicants from families where one parent had already participated in higher education had greater expectations of attending higher education than those from families who did not have such experience.

• 73% reported that they had not received enough or no information on the career implications of post-age 16 subject choice
• 60%had notreceived enough or no information on the relationship between HE courses and employment.
• 51% had not enough or no information on possible alternatives to higher education
• 57% had not enough or no information on the range of degrees on offer