MALMÖ UNIVERSITY
School of Education
Department for Counsellor Training2001-02-19
J Dresch
Symposium on Career Development and Public Policy, Vancouver 2001.
Firstly it is important to give a little background information on the organisation of counselling services in Sweden and to point out that the federal government has started an enquiry concerning the goals and organisation of the counselling services in education and the training of counsellors. The committee will publish a white paper with suggestions concerning these matters in the beginning of April 2001.
There is in Sweden no jurisdiction guarantying the individual right to counselling. Within the education system there are however guidelines that stress that guidance shall be available for all students. The counselling services are almost exclusively financed by public funding and vocational counselling is organised within the Labour Market Authority, hereafter designated AMS, (Arbetsmarknadsstyrelsen) or in the case of educational counselling the local education authorities. Counselling is thus free of charge for the individual and of most people considered a human right. The public sector’s monopoly means of course that the counselling services have been, and still are, regarded by public policymakers as one of their tools for regulating and influencing educational choice and implementing policies for employment and the labour market. Quality assessment is usually based on this assumption. Typical for Sweden is an awareness of the importance of counselling in a lifelong learning perspective but the counselling organisation has to date been focussed on transition.
Regional variation within the Swedish system has been limited but signs of some experimenting at the local level both concerning the organisation and delivery of counselling services are now forthcoming.
As mentioned, counselling services can rather grossly be divided into two areas. School counselling and vocational counselling. Over 90% of children and youngsters up to the age of 19 attend local government schools. Counselling for young people and even adults within the local government education system for adults (Komvux) will hereafter be called school counselling. Counselling for adults (hereafter called adult counselling), usually in work transition is organised within the organisation of the Labour Market Authority (AMS). I will in the following as far as is possible try to treat these two services as separate entities as they even in reality have few common arenas. Adult counselling is on a growing scale even supplied by corporate companies usually engaged in job-services.
- Policy models
Much of the counselling policy is implicit and is based on the following widely accepted assumptions.
Work is beneficial for the health of the individual. Full employment is good for the economy. The individual has the right and obligation to work and society has the right to demand of him/her that he/she works and an obligation to offer him/her work.
Exclusion by unemployment is detrimental to the individual and to
Society.
Low levels of formal education and training are closely related to
unemployment.
Increasing the level of formal education and training will enhance work-force
flexibility and employability, lifelong learning is a natural occurrence.
Of these assumptions follow that counsellors encourage young people and adults alike to strive for higher levels of education and/or training. Special resources have been designated and programmes implemented for improving the level of education and training among those in most need.
School counselling is federally regulated in the school curriculum and school counsellors are a professional body with special training working within the schools. Counsellors are usually engaged in the counselling of children from the age of 7 but it is common for the first counselling sessions to take place as the children at 16 come to the end of their compulsory schooling and prepare to choose their upper secondary school curriculum. Pupils are under strong pressures from peers, parents, teachers and counsellors to continue directly to upper secondary school.
Even counselling in upper secondary schools is federally regulated and young people continue to have the opportunity to meet school counsellors.
All youngsters attending compulsory schooling or voluntary upper secondary school are entitled to counselling. Research shows however that these young people only seem to meet counsellors on one or two occasions when they are in the process of making some form of educational choice. Responsibility for careers education is, according to the curriculum the responsibility of every school employee. Recent studies (UG95 Skolverkets rapport Utvärdering av skolan) show however that others than the school counsellor are giving very little careers education or vocational counselling. These shortcomings (among others) have resulted in a report from the Ministry of Education (Ds 2000:62) suggesting a strengthening of central, regional and local structures to assist schools with their work-life contacts. It is even suggested in the report that the state school evaluation office be more active in assessing the schools´ concerning counselling procedures.
Looking to the future, the Ministry of Education (Ds 2000:62) suggests that the need for counselling and careers education will, especially at the upper secondary level, become a growing concern unless the system is reorganised. These conclusions are based partly on the demographic structure of Swedish society with increasing numbers reaching retirement age and the diminishing number of young people.
Adult counselling is found mainly within two organisations. Educational counselling is offered to adults participating in any of the many federal or local government programmes for basic and further education of adults. Even these counsellors are found within the schools for adult education and work in a similar fashion to the school counsellors, indeed many of them work part-time as school counsellors and part-time as adult counsellors and the teaching facilities are in the same buildings. Many of the clients are unemployed or at risk of unemployment and have not previously completed upper secondary school education/training. The main intention of this education is to give the clients a better base for further education or training, which will enhance their chances on the labour market. A minority of the clients also intend to enhance previous study results to enable them to enrol at university. Counselling in these institutions is mainly concentrated on matters concerning educational choice and study financing.
Vocational counselling is provided by the National Labour Market Administration (AMS) who is responsible for employment and recruitment at all levels. One of AMS´s most important tasks is to support people with the greatest employability problems by offering and/or providing them with education and training. The ultimate goal is to give clients necessary skills and information to enable them to find and enter employment. The intention is to give clients necessary skills and information to enable them to find and enter employment. Counselling is for AMS mainly concerned with vocational counselling of long-term unemployed. Counsellors are based at job centres and special centres working with work rehabilitation programmes. Counselling concentrates on helping clients to overcome personal and educational obstacles and to find suitable employment by giving vocational training, information, job-hunting skills and motivation training.
Five years ago, in 1997 The Adult Education Initiative (Kunskapslyftet), a programme to enhance the general level of education amongst adults, started. As a result of this programme many local government authorities have in co-operation with other authorities such as employment offices, social welfare offices, health services etc. opened counselling centres and adults participating in the training programmes are offered information and counselling. These initiatives can be seen as important turning points where training/education and counselling is developed in the life-long learning perspective.
2. Quality outcomes
School counsellinghas in recent years been concerned with a few main issues. Apart from gender equality and the problem of exclusion of immigrants and other minority groups, quality outcome seems to have been equated with how successfully counsellors entice pupils to continue studying at college after completing compulsory schooling. As many as 20% of pupils at compulsory school do not qualify for upper secondary school and must therefore complete their studies in a special programme (IV-programmet). In this programme counsellors play an important roll in motivating and coaxing pupils to attain necessary levels. Drop-outs have for policy makers become a growing concern during the past years as young people dropping out of upper secondary school without completing their courses cost money and present a problem as unemployed job-seekers lacking basic training/education. It has, without research evidence, been assumed that choosing the wrong upper secondary school curriculum is the main reason why youngsters prematurely leave upper secondary school. It is of course necessary to research the causes and such research should include such things as the way youngsters perceive the future, how they are influenced by the media and to what extent upper secondary schools are adjusting to new societal demands. In an attempt to improve employability among the most poorly educated adults the government has in recent years enhanced the possibility for adults to engage in further education programmes. This has in a significant way increased the number of adult students but even here the quality of counselling has not been defined, recruitment seems to be the main issue.
Adult counselling
For nearly a decade Sweden has been crippled by unemployment figures in the 10 – 14% interval. During this period (until 2000) workforce development has been high on priority and the adult education centres have played an important role in raising the educational standard of large numbers of the adult population. Even streamlining the employment services to effectively supply the labour market with an adequate workforce has been a priority. The Swedish federal government set for the year 2000 the goal of reducing unemployment on a national level to below 4%, a goal that was achieved by the latter part of the year. Labour market policies have been concentrated on the implementation of different interventions to reach this goal. Among other things by reducing the time that jobs have stood vacant, reducing the number of people affected by and duration of long-term unemployment and by promoting healthy and challenging work environments which reduce the risks of injury, fatigue and exclusion.
For public sector resources to be utilised in the best possible manner it is necessary to evaluate both what the authorities are doing and how they are doing it. Audits sent to the Government include among other things the evaluation of quality, cost, incomes and effects.
3. Costs/benefits
School counselling is mainly concentrated on education information. It would be a gross exaggeration to claim that any real careers education is prevalent in Swedish schools. Counsellors have great difficulty in gaining access to children in classrooms and counselling is therefore reduced to a few opportunities for the counsellor to give collective information concerning different educational choices that the children must make. The average number of individual counselling sessions for each child is no more than two-three per annum (grades 7-9). The previously so acclaimed system of work-life experience for all school children has during the past few years been reduced and in fact in some places almost disappeared completely. Once again the costs/benefits discussion is mainly concerned with dropouts from upper secondary school. Although the school curriculum stresses the importance of counselling for good educational and vocational decisions no real discussions concerning long-term gains both for the individual and society are prevalent outside the body of counsellors.
Adult counsellinghas been focussed for many years on occupational information, specifically job vacancies. The costs/benefits of counselling have in recent years been challenged as AMS has in many ways equated counselling with information. The establishment of information centres (Infotek) throughout Sweden and the closing of AMS central unit for counselling (Vägledningsenheten) best indicate this.
A national database containing all vacant jobs is accessible on the Internet from stand-alone computers located at employment offices; libraries, information centres and even from home, if you have a computer and a modem. The database contains information about vacant employment which is updated continuously (Swedish jurisdiction states that vacant jobs must be reported to the employment authorities) and it is even possible to source other information among other things concerning education at all levels.
This concentration on making information so readily available to the general public is an important development but it can be argued that it has to some extent been at the expense of counselling. This implies that policymakers at AMS do not consider counselling to be the most cost-effective way of reducing unemployment.
4. The roles
Basically it can be said that school counselling has concentrated on giving youngsters information about possibilities available to them through educational choice. Counsellors have encouraged young people to pursue their interests and the younger the children the less important the vocational implications. School counsellors working with adults are of course much more aware of the necessity to choose education and training from a vocational perspective.
AMS-counsellors on the other hand work mainly with adults on the threshold of entering or re-entering the work force and are per definition far more “job-oriented” as the main goal of AMS is to ensure a well functioning labour market. Much of the AMS-counsellors work has, now that unemployment in Sweden is again at a low level, been concerned with the rehabilitation of people with some form of functional or social disability giving them difficulties gaining employment. Due to this specific client group a wide range of methods including group counselling and interventions such as job clubs, start your own company, etc. are utilised and refined by AMS-practioners.
School counsellors and adult counsellors have traditionally had very few common arenas. As unemployment grew in the first half of the 1990:s young people were among the hardest hit. The local education authorities were responsible for youngsters up to the age of 20, after that AMS took over. It soon became apparent however that the boarder between the two authorities was in itself a problem. Young people risking unemployment needed to come into contact with the realities of the labour market and vocational counselling at an earlier stage. This insight led to “informal” contacts and co-operation between counsellors and in some cases the local job-centres (AMS) appointed special “Youth Counsellors” to work with young people and the special problems concerned with entering the labour market for the first time. These first steps in finding common arenas has developed through the years and is now commonplace with co-operation between the two authorities to find suitable and flexible solutions to difficult counselling problems. Even counselling centres with both school and AMS counsellors represented are now becoming commonplace.
Until very recently the public sector (AMS) has had a total monopoly in all matters concerning employment and recruitment. Trade unions, the state church and volunteer organisations have always been closely entwined with the federal organisations and have not competed with them. This is especially evident concerning the provision of career development services. Similarly there have been no private sector alternatives to public counselling.
Even private companies have access to the state computer bank containing vacancies and employment seekers and these complement the state employment services. During recent years changes have been made, the monopoly is broken and niche companies such as Manpower have begun to establish themselves. Both large and small corporate companies are extensively now turning to recruitment agencies where they would previously have been obliged to use the state employment offices. It is possible to see some patterns developing where private sector companies specialise in providing work force to selected areas of the labour market. Two examples are qualified medical staff for hospitals (nurses and doctors) and relatively unqualified temporary staff across a wide range of fields e.g. shop assistants, cleaning personnel, clerical staff etc.
5. Counsellor training
There is only one academic training programme for counsellor training in Sweden. The programme is a three-year university course leading to a B.Ed. in Counselling. For employment within the educational system this training is a mandatory. There are even Masters and doctoral programmes for these graduates.
For work as a counsellor in the State Employment Authority (AMS), no formal qualifications are required as in training is given to new employees. The duration of this basic counsellor training varies but rarely exceeds more than a few of weeks. After basic training AMS-counsellors are frequently offered courses specially constructed for their special needs. During the past decade AMS has recruited an increasing number of graduates from the counselling programme. Modules from the B.Ed. counselling programme have for some years been utilised for the further training of AMS-counsellors.