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Guidance in France

Introduction

What is characteristic of the French system is a great variety of the services providing information and guidance. The advantages of this situation are a wide range of techniques, of practices, and of practitioners and a large number of guidance providers all over the French territory. But what is missing is a certain coordination and coherence at a national level, which means for the clients a lack of visibility. So it is rather difficult to evaluate those guidance providers and to have a clear overview at a national level. Relationships between all those services are rather difficult. In other words, there is no unique life long guidance service in our country.

Despite of all this, the main guidance providers are run by two Ministries, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour, even if other ministries are involved as well: Ministry of Higher Education and Research and to a lesser extent Ministries of Youth and Agriculture. Guidance services depending on the Ministry of Education are targeting post-primary schools, higher and further education institutions, roughly 600 guidance services (CIO Centre d’Information et d’Orientation) with a national information provider ONISEP (Office National d’Information sur les Enseignements et les Professions). The job is carried on by very well trained practitioners such as guidance counsellors called Conseillers d’Orientation Psychologues and non specialists, such as teachers. These counsellors are working both in the educational institutions and in the guidance centers.

There is also what we call MGI (Mission Générale d’Insertion) which is a structure focussing on school leavers without any qualification and droppers as well.

In each university there is a guidance service called SCUIO (Service Commun Universitaire d’Information et d’Orientation).

Guidance services depending on the Ministry of Employment are targeting adults, unemployed/jobseekers, persons looking for another job or a training opportunity. They are counsellors working in job centres all over the territory.

Ministry of Employment services are geared more towards an adult public looking for jobs, redeployment, mobility or training. Activities are run in the National Employment Agency (ANPE – Agence Nationale pour l’Emploi) and its network of local employment agencies which cover the whole of France and are managed by employment counsellors. The Ministry also supervises an organisation producing information on continuing training: the INFFO Centre.

This very brief review is nevertheless deceptive, since huge numbers of public and parapublic institutions, private agencies and different associations have appeared over the last twenty years. These include, for instance: the PAIO (Permanences d’Accueil, d’Information, et d’Orientation – Permanent Reception, Information and Guidance Centres) and the ML (Missions Locales – Local Missions) for young people aged 16 to 25 facing problems of social and occupational inclusion; the CIBC (Centres interinstitutionnels de bilan de competences – Interinstitutional skill assessment centres) for employees and jobseekers devising occupational or training plans; guidance centers implemented by the Chambers of skills and Crafts or some economic sectors and so on without forgetting totally private guidance centres and private press agencies such as L’Etudiant (The Student) offering information for secondary school and university students.

This wide range of information, guidance and counselling services has been shaped by differences in respect of the groups targeted (school pupils, young people, adults, the unemployed, women, the disabled), the types of service offered (individual counselling, skill audit, group or individual services, training, information), practitioners’ qualifications (counsellors, psychologists, teachers, information providers, social workers), the status of facilities (public, private, voluntary, commercial, professional) and financing (state, local authority, joint organisations, enterprises, users)

Recently, a number of state initiatives, in a Life Long Learning perspective, and considering European priorities such as social inclusion and equal opportunities for youngsters, outline the necessity to find a coherence between the main guidance providers. One of the most outstanding outcome of these policies was the appointment of a new person whose main mission was to carry on a survey on the different guidance services and from this, to propose a common set of objectives, and to put in synergy the different networks and actors from the different ministries, Education, Higher Education and Research and Employment (we refer here to a unique delegate representing those different ministries).

Page last updated: 12 June 2008