Abstract:

Individual career counselling means providing support to a client (a young person, student) with choosing a life path and occupational field that is important to him or her personally. A decision made in accordance with one’s personality traits and strengths mean that anyone can improve his or her quality of life while gaining satisfaction from the process and/or result of an activity. In educational institutions in Latvia, school career counsellors provide such consultations upon young people’s request. The participation of both parties (the young person and the counsellor) in individual career counselling is voluntary. Availability of individual career consultations for youth has rapidly improved with the implementation of the project: “Career Support in General and Professional Education Institutions” in the period from year 2017 until 2022.

The research aim is to summarise the reports of the cooperation partners involved in the project implementation on the number of individual career consultations in general and professional education institutions and to analyse the main trends of this process.

The research methods used: theoretical literature analysis, statistical data analysis and evaluation. The research period span from March 2017 until December 2021. In this time period, a total of 18 665 individual career consultations were provided. In academic year 2020/2021, the number of individual career consultations reached its maximum – 8468 consultations in general secondary education institutions and 1224 consultations in professional education institutions. As a result of the research, it has been concluded that individual career consultations are an important functional duty of a career counsellor. Individual career consultation dynamics in educational institutions has increased rapidly after career counsellors were offered additional training in relation to counselling skills improvement.

Keywords:

General and professional education institutions, individual career counselling, school career counsellor, students.