Students’ professional and career guidance in the Romanian teaching system

In our society, the students’ professional and career guidance is the answer to many educational dilemas. In the context of talks about a school crisis, counseling and guidance can contribute to preparing and integrating young people in the work market, which can implicitly lead to improving the educational system. Finding a job is a very challenging experience to many graduate students. There is a relatively small number of jobs, the employers’ requirements seem hard to meet, and the entrepreneurship spirit is difficult to develop during this generalized financial crisis. The purpose of the students’ counseling and guidance is to help them grow from a personal point of view and endow them with the knowledge and skills which are necessary for an effective management of their own careers.

If we use the term « career » in its broadest sense, which is the learning and work route a person takes during their active life, it is obvious that the development of the career management skills must begin during childhood and carry on throughout the rest of one’s professional life.

In the Romanian educational system, school and career counseling and guidance is an educational action, under the following forms: 1. Within the framework of the curriculum, as counseling and orientation classes given by the head teachers; 2. In counseling offices in schools, as individual or group counseling sessions, by counseling teachers. Unfortunately, not all schools have such counseling offices. For instance, there are only 41 such offices in the entire Dolj county, for over 200 schools. The lack of school counselors is partly covered by the County Counseling Office and the County Educational Resource Center in each county. The Dolj county counseling office was instituted in 2005. 3. In counseling and career information centers, others than those within the educational system, such as the National Agency for the Workforce, The County Agency for the Workforce etc; 4. In projects in partnership with the community aiming at counseling young people concerning their career.

The students in the « Tudor Arghezi » Theoretical Highschool in Craiova have been involved in the following projects during the past couple of years: -« Career education» for secondary school students, in partnership with the Dolj County Office for Pedagogical Assistance; - « Job Shadow Day » for students in the last year of highschool, in partnership with Junior Achievement Romania, the Dolj County School Inspectorate and some local, national and multinational companies; -« CONSEL –counseling students for an easy transition from school to an active life », a project which was partially funded from the POSDRU European Fund; -« Informing and counseling highschool students about their career”, in partnership with the Dolj County Centre for Educational Resources.

It is worth mentioning the fact that, despite the fact that taking part in counseling and guidance activities is an opportunity every student has, not all of them have taken advantage of it, because of various financial and human resource reasons.