The role of counselling and guidance in promoting lifelong learning in france

Abstract

Until the latter part of the twentieth century, education and training were confined mainly to the first phase of a person's life. Young people progressed on a straight line from school to work or to vocational education and training or to higher education, with little opportunity to change direction. Once they had left the educational system they were unlikely to return. But, nowadays, in all developed countries, the structure of people's lives is undergoing radical change in the distribution of activities by age, leading to a shift to older age groups undertaking functions previously reserved for an earlier time in life. These tendencies are linked to changes in the labour market structure, and are accompanied by readjustments in the social arrangements that regulate ‘who does what, when’. These include policies to defer statutory retirement ages, extend compulsory education and training, and to postpone the age at which young people become entitled to unemployment and social benefits in the transition to working life. Despite the fact that, for many years, education was considered to be one of the most powerful guarantors of social justice, offering equal opportunities to all and selecting and awarding on the basis of merit, it has since become clear that education rather works to reproduce existing social divisions and statutes, at least partly because pupils arrive in and proceed through the system with different kinds and amounts of economic, social and cultural resources to help them. Vocational guidance services are implicated in these processes, especially in their role as an educational selection and allocation mechanism. But, as a source of information, vocational guidance can promote learning. Accreditation of work experience as a part of the larger recognition of a right to lifelong learning and another conception of competence building, also can increase access to further education.