This handbook is a joint publication of the European Commission and of the OECD. Its aim is to inform policy makers in any country to decide on the most appropriate strategies for policies for career guidance in their countries in the education, employment and community sectors. The main part of the handbook is divided into 14 policy themes, organised in 4 sections:
+ Improving career guidance for young people
+ improving career guidance for adults
+ Improving access to career guidance
+ Improving policies and systems for career guidance.

Each policy theme is addressed as follows:
=Key problems/issues that need to be considered
=Questions that policymakers should ask in addressing those issues
=Options that policymakers can adopt to improve policies
=Some examples of effective responses.

The handbook was co-edited in 2004 by Richard Sweet, OECD, and John McCarthy, European Commission, based on material prepared by Prof Ronald Sultana and Prof Tony Watts. It is a staff working paper of the European Commission.

The Arabic translation of the Handbook was kindly facilitated by the Qatar Foundation. The editing of the Arabic version was kindly undertaken by Dr Aboubakr Badawi (Egypt).

This summary was translated by Dr Neruda Barakat, Skills and Career Centre, Tishreen University, Latakia, Syria.

This Green Paper published by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in June 2012 proposes a way forward for a National Career Development Strategy for Australia. The Green Paper has been informed by extensive discussions with key stakeholders and by a number of national research projects.

The Australian Government recognises the need to support individuals, throughout their lives, to make appropriate choices about education, training and work, and to manage their careers successfully. A National Career Development Strategy will help to achieve this. The Green Paper:

·       outlines why career development is important for Australia’s future

·       indicates why Australia needs a National Career Development Strategy

·       suggests some initial priorities for a National Career Development Strategy; and

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.

This review undertaken by Prof. Tony Watts for the Welsh Assembly Government, was part of a wider review of careers services in Wales, UK. Its aim was to review the work of Careers Wales in terms of strengths and challenges, including its links to other career guidance providers, in an international context, using benchmarks provided by the OECD Career Guidance Policy Review and drawing comparisons with other main all-age guidance providers in New Zealand, Northern Ireland and Scotland (with some reflections on comparisons with the adult careers services in England).

The report is structured as follows:

• setting the direction (policy context, structure, resources, international context)
• shaping the service (including access, coherence, targeting, and marketing)
• improving performance (assuring quality)
• working with other guidance providers
• summary of strengths and challenges.

The development of lifelong guidance delivery systems and access to such by citizens is a high political priority in Europe. In most countries segmented and dis-associated career guidance services exist; and one approach to overcome such boundaries is to develop a networked and linked approach to the provision of an all-age service. This report is essential reading on one country's experience of a network linked approach, enhanced with comparisons to other all-age models in other countries.

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.

Recommendation 195 concerning human resource development - education, training and lifelong learning - has 11 chapters including:

• development and implementation of education and training policies
• education and pre-employment training
• development of competencies
• training for decent work and social inclusion
• framework for the recognition and certification of skills
• training roviders
• career guidance and training support
• research
• international and technical cooperation.

Members agreed through social dialogue to formulate, apply and review national human resource development, education and training, and lifelong learning policies which are consistent with economic, fiscal and social policies. Career guidance is positioned as central to national HRD policies.