The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, and the European Commission have conducted reviews of the career guidance policies and practices in 37 countries. The 37 country studies, together with the 3 synthesis reports and a number of other commissioned papers, constitute the largest database on career guidance policies that has ever been collected. The present article, based in large part on the 3 synthesis reports, addresses the finding relative to 5 key policy issues: rationale, evidence, delivery, resources, and leadership.
Public policy is not of immediate and intrinsic interest to most career guidance practitioners. What draws them to this work and what inspires and motivates them are not policy goals but a concern for helping people. They are interested in people as individuals, not in political agendas. This, arguably, is right and as it should be. But, of course, public policy is crucial to career guidance work. Most career guidance services in most countries are paid for by governments, whether at the national, regional, or local level. A few countries have experimented with the possibility of moving, at least in part, toward more market-based models in which individuals (especially adults) pay, but even this is a policy decision. If career guidance services are to be developed for all, on a lifelong basis, the active and convinced support of policy makers is essential. If the career guidance profession is to achieve this support, it must learn to talk their language and address their concerns.
Internationally, career guidance is now higher on the public policy agenda than ever before. The last 3 years have seen overlapping policy reviews in this area by three influential international organizations. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), based in Paris, conducted a Career Guidance Policy Review that involved 14 countries (OECD, 2004). The World Bank then decided to use an adapted form of the OECD process to conduct a parallel review in seven middle-income countries (Watts & Fretwell, 2004). Finally, the European Commission, as part of its policy work on lifelong learning, decided to use the OECD questionnaire to collect information on all the existing and new European Union member states that had not been involved in the OECD review and produced a report covering career guidance policies across the European Union as a whole (Sultana, 2004).
Together, these OECD, World Bank, and EC reviews cover 37 countries. The 37 country studies, together with the three synthesis reports and a number of other commissioned papers, constitute the largest data-