The services we offer at Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin are based on a highly-developed understanding of educational advice, which we have documented as a set of guidelines that define objectives, principles, competences and resources as well as the quality of delivery. Uniform quality assurance and regular further training of our staff ensure that the high standard of guidance and counselling is maintained and perfected.
Philosophy
The increasing complexity of techniques, materials and forms of communication is influencing and shaping more and more areas of society, the economy and the environment. Current challenges such as digitisation, demographic change and the consequences of the corona pandemic for the employment market point to the increased importance of vocational and general further education and of lifelong learning.
For the productivity of the Berlin economy and for the work and life balance of everyone in Berlin, it is important that its citizens, whether employed or unemployed, have access to opportunities for further education, training and professional qualifications. A main focus of Berlin’s employment policy is on motivating people to engage in educational activities, as these contribute significantly to employment and career advancement.
In order to actively influence the changes that are taking place in the world of work, the Federal Government and the Länder together with their business and social partners launched the Nationale Weiterbildungsstrategie (National Continuing Education Strategy) in June 2019. The aim is to establish a new culture of CET (Continuing Education and Training) and to better dovetail the employment market and education policy instruments, combining CET programmes of the Federal Government and the Länder so as to expand and better network the existing guidance services nationwide.
The Berlin regional authority has long been committed to providing and maintaining independent education and training guidance. The Senate Office for Employment was an early adopter of national and European recommendations with regard to the design of lifelong guidance and its quality assurance.
Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin provides information on career development and advancement opportunities, on the employment market and on educational opportunities. This is individually tailored for personal educational use. We provide independent advice with minimal fuss to support lifelong learning. This is of particular value to individuals who need support in making the right decisions when faced with such a wide range of professional requirements and educational opportunities.
The Berlin regional authority provides the funds for ensuring and developing this resource; indeed, it is viewed as a role model throughout Germany and Europe. It is in the clear interests both of the individual and of a living democracy that opportunities exist for employment and for social participation.
Objectives and standards
Keeping Berliners well informed and advised
The Educational Counselling and Career Guidance service is based on an understanding of the advice that individuals require in making decisions that affect their educational and career prospects and supports them in planning their next move. The follow-up to any guidance and counselling session remains the responsibility of the individual.
Bolstering the individual’s own ability to make decisions and act accordingly as well as empowering the individual in dealing with educational and occupational issues is seen as the starting point for a non-directive counselling strategy.
Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin is characterised as follows:
- Focus on the concerns, interests and needs of the individual, taking into account their specific situation and professional requirements (Concerns and Needs Orientation).
- Analysis of skills, experience and competences (Resource and Competence Orientation).
- Discussion of motivation and objectives, and of existing skills and qualifications with relation to professional prospects (Reflection and CV Orientation).
- Interaction between objectives and solutions, with the aim of introducing achievable and structured options and of revealing and developing motivation and proactive outcomes.
Our staff are fundamentally committed to the provision of non-discriminatory educational guidance that is consistent with the principles of equal opportunities for all.
Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin is founded on the principles of independence, impartiality, confidentiality, equal opportunities and a holistic approach.
Educational Counselling and Career Guidance
- empowers the individual to independently shape their education, their professional career and their life planning, and supports them in their decisions on further education and professional development;
- supports the preservation of the individual employability of citizens and thus contributes to the development and security of the skilled workforce that the economy demands;
- assures transparency concerning the various vocational education and training offers and informs about opportunities and prevailing conditions in the employment market;
- boosts the willingness of citizens to engage in continuing education and motivates them to engage in educational activities and/or lifelong learning;
- takes into account the special needs of disadvantaged groups in the population and develops needs-based counselling services, especially for people with disabilities.
The Educational Counselling and Career Guidance network
Educational Counselling and Career Guidance resources comprise the relevant facilities supported by accompanying structures for quality assurance and monitoring. These are coordinated in the Department of Employment and Vocational Education of the Senate Office for Integration, Employment and Social Affairs.
They are tasked with providing confidential, learning-related and result-oriented guidance on education and training, on career development and on maintaining/enhancing employability.
The services differ in terms of specialisation and/or specific concerns and issues as follows.
Educational guidance
The educational guidance facilities are primarily active at a local level and deliver either the full range of guidance services or to an equivalent/comparable extent. In the case of specific individual needs, staff at local centres will refer clients to one of the specialist counselling centres or to offers and services delivered by our partners such as district advice centres, basic education centres, adult education centres, women’s counselling centres or employment agencies and job centres.
Specialist advice
The specialist advice facilities, offered at one location or across several centres, are geared to specific concerns or aimed at specific target groups.
These include:
- Mobile educational guidance for immigrants and refugees (MoBiBe), which is integrated and offered at multiple locations.
- Specialist guidance: Post-qualification and catch-up on vocational qualification
- Specialist guidance: Acquisition of language skills and vocational qualification (EMSA) for migrants.
- Specialist guidance: Advice for small and medium-sized enterprises on staff qualifications.
Mission statement: Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin
The mission statement of Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin sets out the objectives, the tasks and the technical/methodological foundations for publicly funded education and further education counselling in the Federal State of Berlin. At the same time, it documents the many years of experience and expertise in designing a professional education and continuing education guidance service in Berlin that is geared to quality criteria.
The mission statement for Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin
- contains the basic principles and standards for professional and quality-assured education and career guidance;
- makes transparent the objectives that are pursued with the offer;
- outlines the applicable quality characteristics and criteria;
- and describes the services on offer at the various centres;
- is subject to regular review and improvement with regard to the further development of the range of advice services, professionalism and quality.
Educational guidance in Berlin: A success story
Berlin can look back on more than 30 years of dispensing advice and guidance on basic and continuing education. The establishment and development of education and further education guidance services in the city has extended over several periods of time, each with temporarily different emphases and focal points.
Various advice services and structures were set up and have subsequently changed during the long time they have been in existence, while others have been more recently added. To ensure flexibility of response to newly surfacing issues and concerns in career guidance, Berlin has introduced new concepts and formats or modified existing ones.
The experience, findings and approaches have come together to form the mission statement of Educational Counselling and Career Guidance in Berlin. This mission statement is the basis on which the providers in Berlin and their staff operate.
QBM quality assured
The facilities offering education and careers advice and guidance have committed themselves to the highest quality of provision and implement regular quality assurance and development procedures.
These same facilities are able to guarantee the quality of their education and careers advice because they are bound by a uniform quality management model.
The aim and focus of the quality work in the facilities is to design and create circumstances and conditions in such a way that high-quality advice and guidance is offered to all clients, irrespective of their individual different requirements.
The Berlin QBM (Qualitätsrahmen Berliner Modell) quality framework model comprises an internal and external quality assurance procedure to ensure that participating facilities offer “good, high-quality advice and guidance” to the citizens of Berlin.
Essential to this are:
- Fulfilment of quality requirements as laid down by the QfB (Qualitätskonzept für Beratung) criteria developed by k.o.s GmbH. Proof of quality must be provided by means of regular auditing and certification every three years;
- Application of and/or submission to applicable principles and standards for advice services in the Federal State of Berlin (Mission Statement),
- Validation for quality assurance by a QBM panel,
- Award of the QBM seal of approval as evidence of the fulfilment and achievement of the quality requirements in compliance with QBM procedure
Specialist publications
23.000
interviews conducted annually
15
centres
in Berlin
9 am – 5 pm
Monday to Friday
14
languages spoken by our counsellors