Referencepunkterne er udviklet i forbindelse med et udredningsarbejde om kvalitet i vejledning som EU har iværksat og er beskrevet i publikationen Improving lifelong guidance policies and systems (2005). Referencepunkterne kaldtes i et forarbejde for metakriterier.
Det drejer sig om i alt 18 referencepunkter fordelt på 5 grupper for kvalitet i vejledningen, der kan udgøre en fælles kerne for alle EU-landene:
a) Citizen and user involvement
Quality assurance systems for career guidance should:
- Include information for the user regarding their entitlement (for example through users’ charters) and take account of the work of national and European consumer associations in processes for consumer protection and redress.
- Ensure that individual users are regularly consulted on their experience of and satisfaction with the service.
- Require service providers to make systematic use of the findings from such consultations.
- Involve the user in the design, management and evaluation of guidance services and materials.
b) Practitioner competence
Quality assurance systems for career guidance should:
- Require practitioners to have the competence needed to perform the guidance tasks they are called on to undertake.
- Require guidance practitioners to hold, or be working towards, qualifications that ensure that they have the competencies required to undertake guidance tasks.
- Include the monitoring or assessment of the work of guidance practitioners with respect to the outcomes of guidance interventions that they are expected to deliver.
- Require on-going professional development and service improvement.
- Include relevant practitioner associations in the development of standards and quality assurance procedures.
c) Service Improvement
Quality assurance systems for career guidance should:
- Include clearly defined standards of service (20), some way of monitoring whether a service meets those standards, and, where this is not the case, a procedure to follow to bring them up to standard.
- Include some way of monitoring and evaluating whether action undertaken to improve services and information, in fact, results in reaching specified standards and in ongoing improvement.
- Include some way of differentiating and monitoring service provision in relation to the needs of different target groups.
- Require services to form working links with, and provide support for, groups and bodies that offer guidance informally (such as parents, voluntary organisations or bodies associated with leisure activities).
- Ensure that guidance materials used (for example assessment tools) meet quality assurance technical specifications.
d) Coherence
Quality assurance systems for career guidance should:
- Include links to promote effective working relationships within and across government departments on quality assurance in guidance.
- Ensure compatibility between different quality assurance systems operating in different guidance sectors, and for different target groups.
- Include ways of monitoring the use and usefulness of links between guidance-providing agencies.
e) Coverage of sectors
- Quality assurance systems for career guidance should contain guidelines on guidance activities undertaken by private agencies, employers, trade unions and other non-State providers.