SERVICES AND PRACTICE
Guidance services in Serbia are provided by different institutions and they are jointly organized by the three mentioned sectors. In the educational sector, schools implement guidance activities as a part of teaching curricula or as extra-curricular activities. Career guidance in schools is provided by teachers, school pedagogues and psychologists.
The activities on a primary school level are mainly focused on professional orientation and helping pupils in the final years of primary school to make choices regarding the next level of education. The changes in a set of educational laws in 2013 include provisions related to career guidance, school teams for professional orientation. One of the biggest promoters of the sustainable system of professional orientation in primary education was the implementation of the project “Professional Orientation in Serbia” by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development and the Ministry of Youth and Sports. National Employment Service is also involved in the implementation of the activities on this project.
In secondary schools, there have been several smaller initiatives to provide school staff with skills, tools and methods to implement career guidance activities in their work, organize school teams for guidance and develop annual plans. These initiatives include the development of a guidebook for secondary school teachers “Career guidance and counselling”, a joint publication of the Euroguidance centre and Belgrade Open School. This publication was followed by a series of Euroguidance centres’ accredited seminars, as well as an online course with the aim to provide basic training in career guidance for secondary school teachers. Furthermore, Belgrade Open School established annual Career Guidance Teams’ fair which promotes the improvement of work of schools’ team for career guidance and Euroguidance centre Serbia established National Career Guidance Awards with the aim to promote good guidance practices.
University career centres provide career information and organize educational activities related to career management such as workshops, lectures and training courses to university students. Many centres provide individual guidance and counselling both on-premises and online. The centres have very active cooperation with the business community and organize internship programmes and they also provide information on educational mobility opportunities. It should be noted that apart from the career centres at the university level, there is a number of career centres at the faculties which are members of these universities.
Key stakeholders for the provision of career guidance services in the employment sector are the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Policy and the National Employment Service. The services provided by NES can be used not only by unemployed people but also by primary and secondary school students, university students and those in search of employment. An example of the activities of NES for this age group is the “Guide for Primary School Pupils” (vodiczaosnovce.nsz.gov.rs) through which pupils can learn about careers to help them in transitioning to the next educational level.
Beside this, in the past few years, a several additional online services have been developed that are aimed at provision of self-assessment tools, career and educational information in guidance, and online counselling such as obrazovanje.rs non-commercial database of all educational opportunities in the Republic of Serbia and portal “BOŠ Karijera” karijera.bos.rs that provides both career information and counselling services to students and youth.
The key role in providing career guidance to youth at the local level is given to the Local Youth Offices. In 2013 and 2014 local youth offices were provided with training to establish Career Info Corners (CIC), a specific form of services to provide career information for youth.
