- 2017Approved/Agreed
- 2018Implementation
- 2019Implementation
- 2020Implementation
- 2021Implementation
- 2022Completed
Description
As stipulated in the National skills strategy 2025, a National Skills Council (NSC) was launched in April 2017 and is chaired by the education minister. It oversees and advises on identified skills needs and how to ensure delivery of the corresponding skills. The NSC includes representatives from senior levels in the public and private sector. It is an advisory, non-statutory body under the remit of the Department of Education.
In 2019, the NSC, within its remit to advise on the prioritisation of identified skills needs and on how to secure delivery of identified needs, discussed the development of the human capital initiative (HCI) and the question of ensuring a continued regional focus in response to skills needs. The council recognises that the significant investment through the HCI will help to develop new undergraduate places, new conversion courses for graduates to meet identified areas of skills needs in our modern workforce and drive agility and innovation across higher education. The HCI is a higher education initiative that consists of three pillars: full-time graduate conversion courses, additional places on existing full-time undergraduate provision, and innovation and agility. The funding under each is awarded through a series of challenge-based competitive call models.
At its meeting in September 2020, the NSC, discussed how the July stimulus package (i.e. a funding initiative aiming to keep people in, and getting them back to, work; the total worth of the package is approximately EUR 7.4 billion) would enhance support for the further and higher education sector and its stakeholders, including learners, students, employees, employers and further and higher education providers. A total of EUR 100 million was allocated from the July stimulus package to the sector to fund over 35 000 additional places in the current year.
In 2020, the NSC approved the following reports for publication: Lifelong learning amongst adults in Ireland, quarter 4 2019 (SOLAS/NSC); National skills bulletin 2020 (SOLAS/NSC); Monitoring Ireland’s skills supply 2020 (SOLAS/NSC); Building future skills (Expert group on future skills needs (EGFSN)/NSC)); and Together for design (EGFSN/NSC).
The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) leads Ireland’s National skills strategy 2025, working across Government via a cross-departmental project team, and working through the primary skills infrastructures, the National Skills Council and nine regional skills forums. Ireland's current National skills strategy is to be reviewed as part of a joint project between the State, stakeholders in the skills sector and the OECD. The review, led by the OECD, focuses on how Ireland is equipped to meet current and future skills needs as well as examines how businesses and employees can be supported to engage in lifelong learning. The NSC plays a role in informing the OECD review, which is due in 2023.
The NSC is now established and performs its core work. An annual statement of the work of the council is presented to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.
Bodies responsible
- Department of Education and Skills (until 2020)
- Department of Education
- Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS)
Target groups
Entities providing VET
- VET providers (all kinds)
Other stakeholders
- Social partners (employer organisations and trade unions)
Thematic categories
Governance of VET and lifelong learning
This thematic category looks at existing legal frameworks providing for strategic, operational – including quality assurance – and financing arrangements for VET and lifelong learning (LLL). It examines how VET and LLL-related policies are placed in broad national socioeconomic contexts and coordinate with other strategies and policies, such as economic, social and employment, growth and innovation, recovery and resilience.
This thematic category covers partnerships and collaboration networks of VET stakeholders – especially the social partners – to shape and implement VET in a country, including looking at how their roles and responsibilities for VET at national, regional and local levels are shared and distributed, ensuring an appropriate degree of autonomy for VET providers to adapt their offer.
The thematic category also includes efforts to create national, regional and sectoral skills intelligence systems (skills anticipation and graduate tracking) and using skills intelligence for making decisions about VET and LLL on quality, inclusiveness and flexibility.
This thematic sub-category refers both to formal mechanisms of stakeholder engagement in VET governance and to informal cooperation among stakeholders, which motivate shared responsibility for quality VET. Formal engagement is usually based on legally established institutional procedures that clearly define the role and responsibilities for relevant stakeholders in designing, implementing and improving VET. It also refers to establishing and increasing the degree of autonomy of VET providers for agile and flexible VET provision.
In terms of informal cooperation, the sub-category covers targeted actions by different stakeholders to promote or implement VET. This cooperation often leads to creating sustainable partnerships and making commitments for targeted actions, in line with the national context and regulation, e.g. national alliances for apprenticeships, pacts for youth or partnerships between schools and employers. It can also include initiatives and projects run by the social partners or sectoral organisations or networks of voluntary experts and executives, retired or on sabbatical, to support their peers in the fields of VET and apprenticeships, as part of the EAfA.
High-quality and timely skills intelligence is a powerful policy tool, helping improve economic competitiveness and fostering social progress and equality through the provision of targeted skills training to all citizens (Cedefop, 2020). Skills intelligence is the outcome of an expert-driven process of identifying, analysing, synthesising and presenting quantitative and/or qualitative skills and labour market information. Skills intelligence draws on data from multiple sources, such as graduate tracking systems, skills anticipation mechanisms, including at sectoral and regional levels. Actions related to establishing and developing such systems fall under this thematic sub-category.