ACADEMIA program and mobility of guidance professionals

The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MEFP), together with the Department of Education, Culture and Sports of the Valencian Community, has launched the ACADEMIA-Spain 2023 mobility program with the slogan "Digitalization, Professional Guidance and Talent Development ”.

In this initiative, guidance professionals from different European countries participate (France, Italy, Latvia, Czech Republic, Sweden), who can visit Vocational Training centers in Castellón, Alicante and Valencia to learn about their projects in situ, as well as exchange strategies and resources regarding professional guidance with their teachers.

The European ACADEMIA program promotes the mobility of guidance professionals in the countries that are part of the Euroguidance Network through annual calls linked to the Erasmus+ projects of educational centers and entities that carry out actions and programs in the field of professional guidance. This activity, with almost thirty years of experience, has a double aspect: each country organizes study visits for counselors from other countries and, at the same time, can send their guidance professionals to the visits and programs offered by the rest of the Euroguidance centers that participate annually in each edition.

The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training is the one that coordinates the ACADEMIA Program in our country, through the Euroguidance Spain unit attached to the General Sub-directorate for Guidance and Lifelong Learning of the General Secretariat for Vocational Training. The MEFP has promoted, in collaboration with the General Directorate of Vocational Training and Special Education of the Valencian Community, the initiative that, in this 2022-2023 edition, is being developed in Valencia.

Euroguidance Spain has managed the mobility of 21 counselors from different Autonomous Communities who, between March and May 2023, will participate in one of the eleven programs that countries such as France, Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Latvia or Romania have organized. The topics covered by the study visits in this edition include: Skills of career guidance professionals, jobs and labor markets of the future; career management skills to improve transitions; socio-emotional competencies as an element of professional guidance, among others.

The European mobility program ACADEMIA is closely connected to the importance that professional orientation has for the MEFP. Specifically, in the new Vocational Training Law (Organic Law 3/2020, of December 29, which modifies Organic Law 2/2006, of May 3, on Education and Organic Law 3/2022, of 31 of March, of organization and integration of Vocational Training), which recognizes educational and professional guidance as a right of students that the competent educational administrations must guarantee through guidance professionals for whom programs such as ACADEMIA are a good opportunity to meet other career guidance systems and practices and establish collaborative networks with other guidance professionals.