Characteristics
In Flanders, GOAL focused on unqualified school leavers (ISCED 3). At de Stap, the service ‘Word Wijs!’ concentrates specifically on young adults (18-25). At de Leerwinkel, GOAL focused on unqualified school leavers of all ages. In this target group, there is a lot of diversity, concerning:
- Gender – 50% male versus 50% female clients.
- Age – clients are aged between 18 and 45 years old.
- Native language – there are 26 different native languages for all clients in the data monitoring system.
However there are also remarkable similarities between clients of the GOAL project:
- Only 13% of the group is employed.
- A majority of all clients (73%) is aged under 26.
For 54% of all GOAL-clients, it is the first time they enrol in guidance. Thus it cannot be stated that clients run from one guidance service or system to another.
97% of all clients reported a positive attitude towards learning. However 67% of them experience one or more barriers that have previously prevented them from participating in education.
74% of all clients do not or not really believe in his or her capacity to attain a specific outcome (low self-efficacy scores).
At the start of educational guidance, only a quarter of all clients had clear ambitions regarding their career.
At de Stap, all of the GOAL counsellors are employed on a part time basis. At de Leerwinkel, all of the counsellors work full time, although none of them work full time on GOAL. More experienced counsellors are working in the same team with counsellors with less experience. The experience of the staff members differs from several months up to several years. Since there is no specific diploma in Flanders that relates to educational or career guidance, counsellors have different educational backgrounds, though most of them have a (more or less) guidance-related diploma.
Both at de Stap and de Leerwinkel, administrative support for GOAL counsellors is limited.
