Agenda
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The European community of learning Providers aims at helping VET providers to get ready for future challenges, on one hand and at increasing the impact of their cooperation at EU level, on the other hand.

Set up in 2017 by Cedefop and six Associations of providers active at European level: EfVET, EVBB, EVTA, EUCEN, EUproVET and EURASHE, the European Community uses learning providers’ needs and priorities as a starting point and works to define practical guidelines for them currently on three areas:

  • mobility of teaching staff;
  • technology-enhanced learning environments and the need to develop teachers’ e-skills;
  • integration of migrants/refugees through learning.

On 13-14 March 2018, the European Community will hold its first general annual meeting in Cedefop premises in Thessaloniki with the active participation of the EU Commission- DG EMPL.

 

Take part in the discussion #learningproviders

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Cedefop is setting up a pan-European system for gathering and analysing information from online vacancies across all EU countries. To ensure the highest possible quality of the system, Cedefop is bringing together members of the ESSNet, representatives from Eurostat, the European Commission and independent researchers to discuss and fine-tune the methodology as well as various algorithms and rules for extracting vacancies and classifying the information they contain.

The workshop provided a platform for presenting and discussing the proposed methodology as well as for sharing the experience and knowledge of various experts in the meeting with the aim to fine-tune various algorithms and arbitrary set rules, related to:

  • data ingestion (web scraping, crawling, APIs download);
  • extraction, de-duplication and expansion of vacancies;
  • classifications of occupations;
  • extraction of skills.

Cedefop expert Vladimir Kvetan, who coordinates the project, stressed that the event represents an important milestone as the methodology gets exposed to external validation and can benefit from critical review before data collection starts. The ESSnet representative Nigel Swier highlighted that the network has been engaging in similar activities in the past three years making small steps forward and this meeting represents a big step to develop a concise system suitable for statistical purposes.

The meeting confirmed the project’s potential as well as the right direction taken in establishing the system and its infrastructure. Participants provided constructive feedback for further development.

During the concluding session, Eurostat’s Fernardo Reis said that the basics are set for a robust infrastructure to collect information from online job vacancies. Mr Swier noted the need to take concrete actions to expand collaboration between Cedefop, Eurostat and ESSnet in this area.

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Cedefop’s new thematic activity ‘Governance of EU skills anticipation and matching systems: in-depth country reviews’ was launched in 2016 to support mutual learning on effective skills anticipation and skill matching, and the exchange of good practices across EU Member States.

Cedefop’s new thematic activity ‘Governance of EU skills anticipation and matching systems: in-depth country reviews’ was launched in 2016 to support mutual learning on effective skills anticipation and skill matching, and the exchange of good practices across EU Member States.

 

The initiative aims to help EU Member States develop, improve or further refine the governance of their skills anticipation and matching systems.

Since 2016, Cedefop has worked closely together with national authorities and key national stakeholder networks of six EU+ countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Malta, Slovakia and Iceland), providing support in setting up methodological instruments that collect labour market and skills intelligence, and in promoting effective dissemination and use of results in different policy areas (such as education and training, employment, active labour market policies).

This policy learning forum (PLF) was a key element of Cedefop’s country support programme. Targeted at participating countries’ national stakeholders, as well as other interested experts, it aimed to provide a platform for learning how to put appropriate key skills anticipation methods into practice. To meet participants’ identified learning needs, the event focussed on three methods and practices of skills intelligence and anticipation:

  1. technological skills foresights;
  2. sector-based skills anticipation;
  3. practical steps of setting up tracer studies.

Key experts in these methods provided a series of lectures on methodologies and challenges of their practical implementation for policy . The PLF also included group exercises, in which national stakeholders were asked to set up mock skills anticipation tools for their respective countries, with guidance from experts from international organisations (ILO, ETF, Cedefop).

The ETF-Cedefop-ILO guide series on anticipating and matching skills and jobs below is a key reference for the PLF/course on skills anticipation methods and practices:

For more information, please refer to the attached draft agenda and concept note.

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The third Policy Learning Forum (PLF) on the writing of learning outcomes in VET built on the positive experiences from the 2016 PLF on the same topic, further deepening the exchange of experiences between national experts in this area and experts from different parts of the world.

The PLF provided a platform for European cooperation on the application of learning outcomes; allowing for the identification of common challenges as well as solutions.