In France, educational and vocational guidance is almost a hundred years old. It is closely related to the business environment and social changes.
The French guidance system has come through the century and adapted to the social, economic and technical developments that have sharply increased the social demand for education and guidance in that time. It was centralised and integrated into the policies implemented by successive administrations.
Below are the key stages of its history:
1919 - the Astier law provides a technical education charter that organises apprenticeships.
1922 - a decree defines career guidance as “all the operations that are within the jurisdiction of the sub-department of technical education, that precede the placement of boys and girls in trade and industry and are aimed at revealing their physical, moral and intellectual abilities”
1928 - inauguration of the national institute of vocational guidance (INOP) for the training of counsellors and research in guidance
1938 - decree law providing for the creation of vocational guidance centres
1959 - educational reforms making schooling compulsory up to the age of 16, not 14; guidance changed into educational and career guidance
1970 - decree of 19 March setting up ONISEP (Office National d’Information sur les Etudes et les Professions), which is responsible for preparing information.
1971 - founding of the Centres d’Informations et d’Orientation (decree of 7 July 1971) which are responsible for providing information and guidance “as part of a continuous educational monitoring process”.
1972 - decree relating to the status of information and guidance personnel.
1989 - act providing the inclusion of the “right to guidance” in training.
1991 - setting up of the status of psychologist among guidance staff
1996 - setting up of a public insertion network for young people
1996 - creation of an overall youth insertion mission in the Ministry of Education
1996-1998 - from 1996, setting up of sequences of guidance education in collèges and then in lycées and vocational lycées (1998).
These stages have been reflected on the ground by guidance concepts and tools that have also had to adapt to the general context.
The theoretical models borrowed from psychology and sociology formed the starting point, with a gradual shift from a mechanistic and idealistic model (where the aim is to match vocational requirements and the personal abilities measured at the end of schooling) to an educational model (where the aim is to develop the ability of the individual to be independent and creative and make choices). That meant switching from the use of personal psychology tests for young people who were about to join apprenticeship programmes to collective testing in order to obtain success diagnoses once schooling became a mass phenomenon. Then came the period of educational guidance and that of education in guidance, which is the concern of all the teaching staff.
2000: European summit in Lisbon, knowledge society, lifelong learning.
That also modified the field of application of guidance, which has now become an issue that is relevant at all times in the life of an individual, whether for changing occupations or undergoing further training after acquiring work experience etc.
What we pointed at here in this historical survey is the evolution of guidance in the educational system in France , in parallel to that guidance and counselling for adults linked with career choices and career developement have been developped, facing the problem of unemployment which was a new phenomenon in the end of the 70’s .
So we can add a number of landmarks as well:
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Creation of the CNAM in 1794 , the oldest institution in France in continuous education whose mission is to train and to deliver guidance to adult at any moment of one ’s working life
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Creation of AFPA, the first network of continuous education centres for adults in 1949
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Creation of the APEC, job centers for executives in 1966
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Creation of ANPE, job centers in 1967
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Creation of the PAIO/Missions locales 1982
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Creation of Skill Assessments Centres CIBC in 1986
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Law in 1992 on the validation of competences: creation of the DAVA
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Law in January 2002 so -called law of « social modernisation » a chapter is devoted to the VAE (validation of skills and professional experience)
So life long guidance rely on new trends which are:
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Educational guidance
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Vocational guidance
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Validation of professional competences
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Skills assessments
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Information of high standard available for free for everybody
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E-counselling
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Coaching
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Career-development techniques
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