ESRC
ECONOMIC
& SOCIAL
RESEARCH
COUNCIL

LEARNING SOCIETY
PROGRAMME

PRINCIPAL
RESEARCHERS

Dr Will Bartlett
University of Bristol

Professor Teresa Rees
University of Bristol

CONTACT 
ADDRESSES

Dr Will Bartlett
School for Policy Studies
University of Bristol
8 Priory Road
Bristol  BS8 1TZ
Tel:  0117 954 5585
Fax:  0117 937 7308
E-mail:  will.bartlett@bristol.ac.uk

Professor Teresa Rees
School for Policy Studies
University of Bristol
8 Priory Road
Bristol  BS8 1TZ
Tel: 0117 954 5579
Fax: 0117 937 7308
E-mail:  teresa.rees@bristol.ac.uk

Duration
30 months
ADULT GUIDANCE AND THE LEARNING SOCIETY

OBJECTIVES

The overall aim of the project was to investigate the effects of different approaches to lifelong guidance services at local, national and European levels.  The specific objectives were:
	to identify the effects of recent reforms on providers of new and emerging guidance services in England and Scotland;
	to compare the operation of guidance services in the UK with the experiences of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands;
	to undertake a review and assessment of EU policy in the field of careers and educational guidance;
	to examine and evaluate various policy options for the management and finance of adult guidance services in the UK.

APPROACH

Four English localities were selected as the case studies for this project: Bristol, Reading, inner London and Sheffield.  The localities were selected on the basis of two main criteria: (a) the type of careers company which had been established and (b) the degree of tightness in the labour market.  The first criterion was designed to capture differences between careers companies by legal form.  This involved four case studies: two were conversions into Local Education Authority/Training and Enterprise Council (LEA/TEC) partnerships, and two were newly established private sector careers companies. The second criterion was designed to provide variation in the labour market in terms of the level of unemployment.  In addition, a further locality (Fife) was added to capture the Scottish dimension of guidance services. In all, 56 interviews were carried out with guidance professionals and managers in the new careers companies, TECs, the voluntary and private sectors, and the Employment Service. Together with additional documentary evidence provided by the organisations contacted, these provided a detailed picture of the local guidance system in each locality.

To help in the assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the guidance system in the UK, studies were carried out of four other European Union (EU) member states: France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, and a documentary study of the emerging policy towards guidance services at EU level was conducted.

MAIN FINDINGS

Adult guidance services were more developed in areas where the new careers companies had been organised as LEA/TEC partnerships rather than where an independent company had won the contract.

The way in which the careers services and the TECs interact appears to be a key factor in determining the extent of the provision.

Where interaction is close and collaborative, the transition to a contracted out careers service was found to generate a dynamic and innovative approach to the expansion of guidance services for adults.  This appears to be best achieved where there is a formal organisational partnership on which to base the work of the careers service.

Where there is no such interaction - or it has been made more difficult by independent careers companies coming in which do not have close links to the TEC structures - adult guidance provision is less coherent and more fragmented.  In these cases, TEC funded contracted out provision is fragmented and small scale.  It fails to benefit from the economies of scale identified by the large independent careers companies as being important in their statutory activity.

Guidance systems were found to vary substantially among different EU countries, raising questions about the role of EU policy in relation to systems for the emerging European single market and the possibilities

for the co-ordination of an EU approach to the development of lifelong learning.  Systems vary from the highly centralised and state bureaucratic in Germany to the pluralistic French system with its ‘quasi-market’ provision (introducing market principles into publicly funded) services for adults.  Here, employees have rights to a leave of absence for skills assessment.  The decentralised system in Italy has a strong reliance on local initiative, involving local government and local business interests as well as the client groups themselves, sometimes in social cooperatives.  The Dutch system is characterised by a trend towards open marketisation of guidance services.

The EC recognises the need for guidance to support the development of the European Single Market, especially in relation to promoting EU-wide labour mobility, and as an integral part of EU education and training systems.  However, partly reflecting the diversity of guidance systems at the national level, EU policy has been developed in a fragmented manner through a number of separate labour market and training programmes.  The key role of the EU is in providing small scale, pump priming funding to support local guidance initiatives in the member states.  If a European version of the Learning Society is to be pushed forward, specific and focused policies will be needed to provide EU citizens with equal opportunities throughout the Union.  The various EU programmes can be catalytic in this process, but there is also a need for more strategic thinking at the European level.

At a theoretical level, three distinct models of the Learning Society have been identified in the project:
(i)	The ‘skill growth’ model, which emphasizes the link between skills formation and economic growth.  Career guidance is instrumental and deterministic, providing a brokerage service for individuals in search of particular jobs or training courses.
(ii)	The ‘personal development’ model, which is more concerned with facilitating individual self-fulfillment by provision of resources to enable individuals to make informed choices about their preferred modes of participation in learning and work.  This model implies a more client-centered and voluntaristic role for the guidance services.
(iii)	The ‘social learning’ model, which emphasizes the embeddedness of the learning process in the social and community context in which individuals are situated.  It implies a more action orientated role for guidance services, in which guidance providers work alongside individuals rather than acting as independent experts. These different conceptions of a Learning Society imply radically different approaches to policy.

 POLICY IMPLICATIONS
A number of options for organizing and funding guidance systems have been identified from the international comparative research:
(i)	finance by employers, who stand to gain from a well informed and well motivated supply of workers;
(ii)	finance through local partnerships, which bring together a variety of local interests to finance services for the local community provided by either private or non-profit sector organisations;
(iii)	integration of finance for education, training and guidance services;
(iv)	a state-funded quasi-market in which the state finances provision through competition between preferred provider organisations;
(v)	mutual or collective financing: social self-help membership organisations such as social cooperatives, job seekers clubs and voluntary organisations.

The option being developed in the UK for adult guidance, based almost entirely on user fees and charges is unlikely to be capable of supporting the widespread diffusion of lifelong guidance required to support the needs of an emerging Learning Society. Exactly which alternative option recommends itself as an alternative to the UK model depends very much upon the vision of the Learning Society which drives policy making.

In the UK, policy towards lifelong learning and lifelong guidance is informed by the skill growth model.  However, a wider conception of the learning society is needed, encompassing elements of the personal development and social learning approaches.  The former could be promoted using the second financing option by an extension of Individual Learning Accounts to incorporate a guidance element, including employer contributions (as proposed by the TUC), and drawing on the French experience with skills assessment.  The latter could be supported by the fifth financing option, developing mutual and collective forms of organisation and funding, and drawing on experiences developed elsewhere, especially in the Italian social cooperatives.

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Rees, T., Bartlett W. and Watts, A.G. (1997) “Adult Guidance and the Learning Society: the Marketisation of Guidance Services in the UK, France and Italy” in F. Coffield, (ed), A National Strategy forLifelong Learning, Department of Education, University of Newcastle, 159-176
Rees, T., Bartlett, W. and Watts, A.G. (1999) “The marketisation of guidance services in the UK, France and Germany”, Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 12, No. 1, 5-20
Rees, T. and Bartlett, W. (1999), ‘Adult guidance services in the European learning society: A Scottish case study’ Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 31, no. 1, 21-34
Rees T. and Bartlett, W. (1999), “Models of Guidance Services in the Learning Society: the Case of the Netherlands”, in F. Coffield, (ed), Why’s the Beer Always Stronger Up North? Studies of Lifelong Learning in Europe, Bristol: Policy Press, 21-30
Bartlett, W. and Rees, T. (1999 forthcoming) “Adult guidance services for a Learning Society? Evidence from England”, in F. Coffield, (ed) Speaking Truth to Power: Policy and Research on Lifelong Learning, Bristol: Policy Press