Europe’s digital transformation is accelerating but its skills base is not keeping pace. Despite years of policy focus, only around half of Europeans possess even basic digital competences, while employers across sectors increasingly report that skills shortages are constraining investment, innovation, and growth. The challenge is no longer about recognising the importance of digital skills. It is about delivering them systematically, equitably, and at scale.

As generative AI reshapes societies, European education and training policy faces a central challenge: how to harness AI’s potential while maintaining the human core of learning - critical thinking, ethical judgement, hands-on skills and social interaction. Across Europe, VET and education policymakers are experimenting with ways to safeguard human learning in AI classrooms, ensuring that technology complements, rather than replaces, human interaction.

Generative AI is rapidly reshaping the world of work, raising a fundamental question for European skills policy: will it widen inequality or help reduce it? The answer depends less on the technology itself and more on how it is governed, accessed, and embedded in education and training systems, including vocational education and training (VET).

Welcome to our latest update! Ιn this issue:

• Toolkits on the Move: Events Across Europe
• Coming up next: 4th ambassadors’ webinar & new research on NEETs
• What’s new in our VET toolkits
• Latest Toolkits’ Blog Articles
• Cedefop contributions to the European School Education Platform
• News and achievements from our ambassadors
• Welcoming new ambassadors & a new team member

In this blog article, you will find a collection of the following information:

• Cedefop events on inclusion
• Promoting our toolkits in EU events
• New resources available on the VET toolkits
• Cedefop related publications
• News from our ambassadors and our new members

In this blog article, you will find the following information:

• Relevant events across Europe
• New resources available on our VET toolkits
• News from our ambassadors, including one new member of the network
• News from the European Commission
• Get to know our new VET toolkit team member

In this blog article, you will find the following information:

• VET toolkit team presence at relevant events across Europe
• New publications in the field of inclusion now available
• Recent changes in the team and recently published call for tender
• News from our ambassadors including new network members

Reintegration of individuals at risk into education, training or the labour market is one of the main objectives of vocational education and training (VET) and lifelong learning programmes. A holistic approach embedding strengthened cooperation among a wide range of stakeholders is key in achieving this objective.

Low levels of skills are associated with negative economic and social consequences not just for the individuals and their families but also for the whole economy and society. 

The other side of the coin is that investing in education is linked to higher economic and social returns. Thus, empowering low-skilled adults by means of promoting their upskilling and re-skilling must be seen as a priority, especially nowadays that employment and the economy overall is becoming skills intensive.

Supporting policy-makers and practitioners to promote inclusive excellence in VET

This Europe-wide toolkit is inspired by successful VET practices and aims at helping policy makers, practitioners, and providers of support to young people not in employment, education, or training (NEETs) to design policies and implement practices that will better address the needs of NEETs, helping them to reintegrate into education or training and the labour market.

Vocational education and training (VET) provides opportunities for young people to develop, enrich and upgrade their skills, and to acquire qualifications. Better skills and qualifications increase young people’s employability and assist their inclusion in society.

Research has shown that some young people are at greater risk of becoming NEET than others. According to Eurofound research led by Massimiliano Mascherini (2012, 2016 and 2021), low education level is the most important variable and has the strongest effect in influencing the probability of becoming NEET: this has been confirmed at both the individual and family level, i.e. for young people themselves, but also for young people’s parents with a low education level.

The VET toolkit for empowering NEETs offers different interventions to support NEETs. One of them is easing transitions into work. Work-based learning provides young people with the opportunity to apply their technical or academic skills while developing their employability. It encompasses on-the-job experience such as apprenticeships, as well as off-the-job experiences such as close-to-real simulations.