In July 1966, the European Commission issued a Recommendation on Career Guidance to the then 6 Member States which highlighted in its first article the importance of annual monitoring and evaluation of career guidance services for young people and adults at national level. Such evaluation was intended to provide an evidence base to support the development of the services; establish the needs of different categories of the population; establish priorities in guidance programme activities; assess progress in meeting the access targets; update the existing programme of activities; and determine the financial, technical, and personnel resources required for the development of the services. Fifty-six years later, in a European Union of 28 Member States, such annual national monitoring and evaluation of career guidance services is still almost non-existent in Member States, with perhaps the exception of the Adult Educational Guidance Service in Ireland which was established 22 years ago.

This new CEDEFOP publication represents a first product of a new project started in 2019 that concerns career guidance and learning for adults. The project aims to address the following questions:

1. What is the current status of monitoring and evaluation in career guidance and counselling services in the EU?
2. How do the monitoring and evaluation of lifelong guidance services assist the Member States in achieving an integrated vision of results of individual-based career support along the life-path?
3. What are the methodological options available to achieve a feasible minimum standard for comparable monitoring and evaluation of career guidance and counselling services for adults from a lifelong perspective?

This publication contains a selection of papers that responded to a specific call for interest concerning:
-the current state of play in monitoring and evaluation of career guidance and counselling systems and services in the EU; and
-proposals for how to improve existing methodological approaches.

The five papers of the publication represent national perspectives and proposals for monitoring and evaluation of career guidance services from Finland, Poland, Ireland, Germany, and Wales. The Ireland paper is the only one which gives a concrete operational example of what works, how it works, its development over time, and what have been the individual, organisational, and systems outcomes. But the Ireland paper also highlights that in its case, there is no obligation on the relevant statutory bodies to act on recommendations or issues identified in the evaluation reports. This brings us back to the 1966 European Commission Recommendation starting point, the rationale for monitoring and evaluation. It would be really helpful in a future CEDEFOP publication to have chapters dedicated to the rationale for monitoring and evaluation of career guidance services and also to the many meanings of monitoring and evaluation.