Opinion piece
By Sara Wilson, Sian Halliday Wynes and Josie Misko
TAFE Teacher
Career education has typically focused on school-aged students and young adults, who seem the obvious target for information about career services and educational pathways. However, in recent years the focus has widened. Today it’s no longer common for people to stay in the same job all their working lives; most will change their employer and even their occupation a number of times. This means that people of all ages and educational backgrounds, in a wide variety of jobs, can benefit from career development services.
A new report by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), VET career development services: the way forward, looks at the ideal scenario for career development services and provides clear guidelines on how to embed them in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. Commissioned by the Career Industry Council of Australia (CICA), it is based on consultations held by authors Sian Halliday Wynes and Josie Misko with practitioners across South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.
The authors suggest that the traditional idea of professionals having a career trajectory while those in lower-skilled occupations ’just have a job’ is erroneous. A more helpful approach is to allow people in all types of jobs to find out about the education, training and employment opportunities required for developing and managing a career pathway. Their report focuses on the role that career development services can play in the VET sector, particularly in TAFE institutes.
In the past, career advice in VET institutions was often seen as a supplementary role for student counsellors, whose main task was to help students who had learning or personal difficulties. Those students who required career development services usually had to approach the counsellors themselves, and were often then referred to specialist career agencies. There are signs that this approach is changing, with providers being more proactive in promoting services and helping students to navigate their way around the available information.
These changes informed the guidelines which promote the systematic provision of high-quality career development services across the VET sector. The guidelines look at both developing a person’s career and showing him or her how to manage it in the long term. They promote a holistic model with five main tenets:
- integrating career service provision into each institution’s strategic plan, collaborating with related agencies and groups, and promoting individual responsibility and management
- tailoring services for all cultures, clients and age groups, including existing workers and equity groups
- establishing visible, accessible and inclusive services for clients
- producing knowledgeable and qualified staff who regularly update their skills
- providing quality systems and standards so that services and resources remain current and are validated.
The aim of these guidelines is to establish a system which not only gives all VET students relevant and informed career advice, but also provides it for those who are already on their career path. It should take into account VET’s role in providing pathways to other educational sectors, notably universities, as well as to the workplace. Employers, schools and parents should also have access to relevant resources. Effective career development services give students individualised assistance to reflect on what it is that they want to do and how to get there. One such example is TAFE SA’s student services centre i-Central, where trained counsellors provide information about educational, training and work pathways for students and job-seekers alike.
The authors identify a number of additional issues which will influence the delivery of effective career development services. First, there needs to be funding for career development practitioners to participate in regular professional development, including upgrading their skills and qualifications. Another complex area is making services inclusive of all equity groups, not forgetting those who have been retrenched or are long-term unemployed. Developing and maintaining strong relationships with other agencies and with students, parents, employers, schools and industry mean that lines of communication stay open between all groups and knowledge is shared. All this activity, however, is resource intensive and could further strain already tight budgets.
An effective career development service should enable individuals to meet their full potential and, as part of this process, learn something about their own capabilities and weaknesses. Halliday Wynes and Misko describe career development as a ‘lifelong endeavour’, and seek to establish a system where people can access meaningful information about pathways and possibilities throughout their working lives.
Copies of VET career development services: the way forward are available from CICA's website.