The ICG is holding a national conference for Assessment
in Guidance in Birmingham on 26th June 2007.
Visit
http://www.icg-uk.org/assessmentinguidance for
further information.
For information about an E-learning, E-Portfolios,
E-Guidance Conference and Exhibition organised by
the ICG on 17th July 2007 in Solihull, see http://www.icg-uk.org/eguidance.html
CEGS Career
Guidance Week 2007: ‘Who
Cares About Career?
The Centre for Guidance Studies (CeGS) will hold
its Career Guidance Week 2007, commencing 25th -
29th June 2007. Themes to be covered include:
• Careers education
and the changing curriculum
• The impact of guidance: building the evidence base
• Guidance in the workplace
• New approaches to Advancing Professional Practice
in Careers Work
• New technology and its role in guidance
TRAINING/QUALIFICATIONS FOR GUIDANCE PROFESSIONALS
From March 2007, Advice Resources
is launching a programme of free training workshops
for nextstep centres. For further information, please
click
here.
NAEGA is the major UK association for adult guidance
practitioners. For information about events arranged
for guidance professionals, visit http://www.naega.org.uk/
NIACE (The National Institute of Adult Continuing
Education - England and Wales) is a non-governmental
organisation working for more and different adult
learners. For details about conferences and courses,
and research supporting adult learning, visit http://www.niace.org.uk/Default.htm
The
Euroguidance network helps guidance professionals
and others to understand opportunities for learning
and careers in Europe. For more information,
visit http://www.euroguidance.net/En/Welcome.htm
The PLOTEUS portal provides information about
life-long learning in Europe, supplying information
about studying in Europe to students, job seekers
and guidance professionals http://europa.eu.int/ploteus/portal/home.jsp
The Careers A-Z gateway website gives access to
a variety of information about and links to jobs,
vacancies and professional bodies for adult guidance
professionals. For more information, visit http://www.careersa-z.co.uk.
For a website aiming to be the main source of
information and advice on implementing the Skills
for Life strategy, see http://www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus/
For information for teachers and advisers of adult
literacy, numeracy and ESOL, see http://www.talent.ac.uk/
Course Discover gives information about UK-wide
further and higher education courses, and is available
on CD-ROM or via the internet. For more information,
visit http://www.trotman.co.uk
Adult Directions is a career-matching programme
and occupational database for adults. For further
information, visit http://www.cascaid.co.uk
Careerscape has information about more than 800
careers, for both adults and young people. For
further details, visit http://www.cascaid.co.uk
Odyssey is a database with information about jobs
supplied by the DfES. Over 800 jobs are included,
with a variety of searches. For more information,
visit http://www.progressions.co.uk
Pathfinder asks the user questions to analyse
occupational interest and generate job suggestions.
Users are given the pros and cons of each job,
as well as more detailed information. For further
details, visit http://www.progressions.co.uk
SkillCheck helps users identify key skills and
work-related skills. The user is given a profile
assessing the strength of their skills. The tool
is of special use for users with low self-esteem,
or who lack confidence. For further information,
visit http://www.progressions.co.uk
KeyCLIPS lets users define
searches to generate a list of CLIPS leaflets for
viewing or printing.
For more information, visit http://www.lifetime-publishing.co.uk
ProMICAD is a self-assessment
programme that produces a computer profile of
a user’s personality
and strengths, of especial use for users
with low self-esteem. For further information,
visit http://www.lifetime-publishing.co.uk
Careers England Urges Review
of All Age Careers Guidance
Careers England is urging the Government to set
up a major review with a view to establishing a
better defined all-age IAG strategy in the light
of the Leitch report’s stressing the importance
of independent IAG. Careers England has published
a paper, An All-Age Strategy for Career Guidance
Services in England (March 2007), listing a variety
of options for approaching an all-age IAG strategy
review, visit http://www.careersengland.org.uk/ for more information.
Source: Montrose Reports, 19th April 2007
The Association of Graduate Recruiters produces
reports, surveys and bulletins about graduate LMI.
For further information, visit http://www.agr.org.uk
Confederation of British Industry offers information
about employment and business news. For further
information, visit http://www.cbi.org.uk
The Department of Trade and Industry website gives
access to all DTI publications. For further details,
visit http://www.dti.gov.uk
For information about Higher Education institutions,
visit the Higher Education Statistics Agency website:
http://www.hesa.ac.uk
The LSC Skills and Education
Network provides news and reviews of key LMI publications
on: http://research.lsc.gov.uk/
The Sector Skills Development
Agency compiles LMI relating to skills in different
industrial
sectors. For further information, visit http://www.ssda.org.uk
SkillCheck takes a skills-based approach to job
finding. Users complete two simple questionnaires,
which help them to identify their work-related
and key skills (core skills). When these profiles
are combined with their level of ability/qualifications,
the result is a list of 20 job matches. The following
review is based on extracts from an evaluation
undertaken by geresearch including feedback by
Skills Coaches about SkillCheck, published with
permission of VT Lifeskills.
The SkillCheck
programme was generally well-perceived by the
Skills Coaches. It was seen as good for engaging
with clients and confidence-building for clients
who did not recognise that they have a number
of transferable skills.
The
skills diagnostic feature of the programme
was found to be very
effective at breaking down barriers when first
interacting with clients.
The
audio function supplied with SkillCheck is
useful for clients
with limited reading/writing skills.
By
observing the way clients progress with the
questions and
functions of SkillCheck, Skills Coaches are
able to assess clients’ basic skills
needs in a non-threatening way.
The
job suggestions listed were sometimes seen
as not directly
relevant to clients. However, examples were
cited of people who had picked out jobs from
the list that they might otherwise have not
followed up.
Coaches
valued the simple navigation of the programme,
and
found it bright and easy to use.
The
advanced facilities of SkillCheck include the
Skills Passport,
and Personal Development Plan functions. The
Personal Development plan was seen as useful
as a discussion guide with clients for looking
to the future. The strengths of the Passport
were a clear structure and clear headings,
such as what you want to achieve, how you will
achieve it and the outcome.
Overall,
SkillCheck is a valuable tool for building
the confidence
of people who find it difficult to express
their skills, perhaps because they feel they
lack work experience, do not have traditional
qualifications or because they feel excluded
from the labour market. Coaches reported finding
the programme enjoyable to use, and this was
also true for many of their clients. Young
people were excited by using the computer programme
and found it enjoyable and interesting.
