Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) provide adults with financial support to access learning opportunities, enhancing their incentives and motivation to pursue training. In recent years, ILAs have gained significant policy attention, particularly following the adoption of the EU Council Recommendation on individual learning accounts (2022).
This recommendation introduced a more ambitious concept of ILA as a delivery mode for individual training entitlements (personal budgets or accounts), for all working-age adults. These entitlements are transferrable and can be accumulated over time, and allow individuals to fund labour market relevant training, career guidance, or validation opportunities.
Following the Council Recommendation, Cedefop is supporting EU countries by building the evidence base to assist stakeholders in the design and implementation of ILAs.
Cedefop study on individual learning accounts - the emerging findings
Cedefop is currently finalising a study examining the potential for ILAs development in five EU Member States - Germany, Estonia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Austria.
The emerging findings suggest that current financing arrangements for adult learning in the analysed countries are quite complex, with significant public funding schemes already supporting individual adult learning. This complexity presents the challenge of ensuring that newly introduced ILAs effectively complement existing funding instruments rather than overlap with them.
According to the study, countries that complement supply-side funding strategies with multiple, well-established demand-side financing instruments supporting individual adult learning - often implemented at regional or local level and targeted to specific groups of adults, as it is in the case of Austria, Germany, or the Netherlands - are more conducive to implementing ILAs. On the other hand, countries where significant supply-side funding schemes dominate and demand-side schemes are used sparingly, such as Estonia and Ireland, tend to face less favourable conditions for implementing large-scale, fully-fledged ILAs.
In addition, as a financing instrument, ILAs seem to be a better fit for either relatively short training programmes or those delivered in a low-intensity manner over several years.
Country-specific insights:
Interesting observations emerge from individual country case-studies:
- In the Netherlands, the recently discontinued STAP budget scheme, which was close to the concept of ILAs, suggests the need to adopt a phased approach, starting small based on available budgets, and maintaining strict quality assurance for eligible training programmes and providers.
- The case of Austria offers the opportunity to study both a national demand-side scheme close to ILA (Skilled Workers Grant), provided by the Public Employment Service, and various regional ILA-type instruments provided by the Länder (regions).
- Similarly, in Germany, the study looks at the long experience in implementing different national and regional demand-side schemes (mostly targeted voucher schemes) as well as the on-going reforms to adjust them to the changing socio-economic context.
- In Estonia, well-established supply-side funding arrangements are playing a major role, making the system less conducive for any new large-scale demand-side instrument, such as ILAs.
- Finally, the Irish case presents a system where adult learning is largely financed by a National Training Fund, based on a company levy. Here, supply-side funding strategies dominate, leaving less potential space for (large-scale) ILAs as an additional financing instrument.
These emerging findings were presented and discussed during Cedefop’s virtual-get-together Financing adult learning: zooming in on individual learning accounts, (October 2024). The findings and the recording of the event are available here.