The main aim of this presentation is to discuss the student counselling, guidance and information given in Finnish Comprehensive schools (in short ’school counselling’) from the perspective of professional cooperation. What are the main procedures to support youngsters’ choices of secondary education and vocational training, to prevent drop-outs in the transition periods, and to give necessary psychosocial help to those in need of special support? The task of the school counsellor in Finland is to help pupils (Comprehensive school, grades 7-9; Upper secondary school, grades 1-3) plan their studies, to choose educational paths for the transitions and to make decisions about a vocational career. Some psychosocial services are also provided. School counsellors need cooperation on the inside (with subject teachers and other educational institutions) and on the outside (with social work, youth work & organisations, labour administration) in there task of helping numerous young people. The new challenges of post-modern society mean that pupils’ studying paths become diverse and fragmented; their interests are focused on various sectors of life (media, friends, school, family) and schooling does not necessarily mean a secure way to a vocationally stable career. Problem such as social exclusion, multicultural issues and drop-out rates, require hard thought and systematic work at both the local and national level. How can the professionals working with youngsters in various contexts deal with these challenges, in the midst of restricted economical resources and growing accountability demands? In this presentation, the issues mentioned above are examined through “Model for guidance service arrangements provided in a network” (Nykänen et al. 2007).

The data was gathered from the projects which made special commitment to develop school counselling in their region, municipality or school in Finland from 2008 to 2010. The projects will be partially financed by the Ministry of Education to cover the special costs of development work. For the baseline measurement, the main actors (n = 430) individually filled in the questionnaire. The project plans (f = 148) and their revised versions (f = 83) were examined. Also 112 self-evaluation reports of networked counselling services were analysed. The majority of the respondents were educationalists (school counsellors or subject teachers). The data from the e-questionnaire was quantitatively analysed by counting percentages and comparing genders, regions and selected sub-groups (based on how intensively they were participating in the steering group or other development) by means of parametric and non-parametric tests. Project plans and self-evaluation reports were analysed by content analysis.

The results indicate that the documentation of regional or organisational counselling is quite rare, and the same was true of counselling practises and principles. Information technologies are poorly used in promoting collaboration. Some municipalities or schools occasionally follow their pupils’ educational paths. Pupils who are at risk of being ignored are those with special needs or those belonging to ethnic minorities. Drop-outs are not always recognised in the transitions. Multiprofessional cooperation between schools, youth work, social services and labour administration, needs to be improved. Too much responsibility is put only on the educational organisations. These are however, unable to prevent social exclusion and smooth young people’s transition to secondary education or to the labour market. Both interprofessional (educationalists and schools) and parent-teacher cooperation needs to be improved, to ensure that pupils’ personal education is sufficiently coherent. The comparison between various sub-groups of respondents did not indicate differences of crucial importance.