The European Commission adopted on 10 June a new and comprehensive skills agenda for Europe. The aim is to ensure that people develop a broad set of skills from early on in life and to make the most of Europe’s human capital, which will ultimately boost employability, competitiveness and growth in Europe.
The New skills agenda for Europe calls on Member States and stakeholders to improve the quality of skills and their relevance for the labour market.
According to studies, 70 million Europeans lack adequate reading and writing skills, and even more have poor numeracy and digitals skills. This puts them at risk of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. On the other hand, a large number of Europeans, particularly high-qualified young people, work in jobs that do not match their talents and aspirations. At the same time, 40% of European employers report that they cannot find people with the right skills to grow and innovate. Finally, too few people have the entrepreneurial mindset and competences to start their own business and keep adapting to evolving requirements of the labour market.
Increasing skills levels, promoting transversal skills and finding ways to better anticipate the labour market's needs, including based on dialogue with the industry, are therefore essential to improve people's chances in life, and support fair, inclusive and sustainable growth as well as cohesive societies.
To help tackle skills challenges, the Commission will launch 10 actions which will address these issues and make skills more visible and improve their recognition at local, national and EU levels, from schools and universities to the labour market.
Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen, said: 'We need to invest more in skills in Europe. The most competitive countries in the EU, and in the world, are those that invest most in skills and 70 million Europeans are at the risk of falling behind. Stronger investment in skills is vital for strengthening competitiveness and boosting growth. And most of all, it is crucial to help people to realise their professional dreams and goals and reach their potential. I invite Member States, social partners and businesses to work together with us and make this New skills agenda for Europe a success.'
Some of the Commission's proposed 10 actions to be taken forward over the next two years, were launched on 10 June:
- A Skills guarantee to help low-skilled adults acquire a minimum level of literacy, numeracy and digital skills and progress towards an upper secondary qualification.
- A review of the European qualifications framework for a better understanding of qualifications and to make better use of all available skills in the European labour market.
- The Digital skills and jobs coalition bringing together Member States and education, employment and industry stakeholders to develop a large digital talent pool and ensure that individuals and the labour force in Europe are equipped with adequate digital skills.
- The Blueprint for sectoral cooperation on skills to improve skills intelligence and address skills shortages in specific economic sectors.
The rest of the actions will be launched later this year and in 2017:
- A Skills profile tool for third country nationals to support early identification and profiling of skills and qualifications of asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants.
- A revision of the Europass framework, offering people better and easier-to-use tools to present their skills and get useful real-time information on skills needs and trends which can help with career and learning choices.
- Making vocational education and training (VET) a first choice by enhancing opportunities for VET learners to undertake a work-based learning experience and promoting greater visibility of good labour market outcomes of VET.
- A review of the Recommendation on key competences to help more people acquire the core set of skills necessary to work and live in the 21st century with a special focus on promoting entrepreneurial and innovation-oriented mindsets and skills.
- An initiative on graduate tracking to improve information on how graduates progress in the labour market.
- A proposal to further analyse and exchange best practices on effective ways to address brain drain.
The role of Cedefop
Cedefop’s expertise will support the Skills agenda. Working in the European alliance for apprenticeships, Cedefop strongly advocates work-based learning for adults and young people as a way of developing skills relevant to the labour market.
Making skills more visible requires strengthening systems to validate non-formal and informal learning. Common European tools, which Cedefop helped to develop, such as the European qualifications framework and Europass, which make it easier to understand qualifications and for people to move between different types of learning and across borders, need to be improved.
So too, does labour market intelligence. Cedefop’s skill supply and demand forecasts for the European Union have provided insights into how the labour market is changing, showing differences in sectors and countries in terms of jobs and qualifications.
However, there is scope for developing and combining data on trends in skills and jobs and improving access to them, not just to policy-makers, but job seekers through interactive web platforms such as the Skills Panorama.
How exactly Cedefop‘s expertise will be used in the Skills agenda is being discussed, but the aim – to help people acquire relevant skills, show clearly that they have them and make the right choices to put them to the best use – is clear.
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At a seminar jointly organised by Cedefop and the Netherlands EU Presidency on 23 June in Brussels, experts and stakeholders from around Europe discussed policies for matching better skills in better jobs.
The event was an opportunity to disseminate to European stakeholders the main findings of Cedefop's ongoing research on skill mismatch, most prominently the Cedefop European skills and jobs survey (ESJ survey), carried out in 2014 across approximately 49 000 EU adult employees.
Mirko van Muijen, Head of Education at the Dutch Permanent Representation, welcomed the 50 participants from 22 Member States, the European Parliament, the European Commission and other organisations.
In her opening speech, Cedefop Deputy Director Mara Brugia said that skill mismatch has a cost for individuals, enterprises and the whole of society.
‘It would be too simplistic to think that the issue can only be solved by improving education and training,’ argued Ms Brugia, adding: ‘Even if education reforms are perfect, that will only solve the issue of young graduates and not the one of people who are already in work. Therefore, we need to have policies to support on-the-job training. We also need a holistic approach to skills governance which combines different policies, including social and immigration policies’.
Ms Brugia invited Member States to participate in Cedefop's forthcoming thematic activity on governance of skills anticipation systems. Cedefop will be providing support to countries interested in building their own capacity and improve the governance of their skills anticipation systems.
Cedefop Head of Department for Skills and Labour Market Pascaline Descy highlighted that, even though many policy-makers have focused in recent years on the notion of matching people's skills to jobs, this static view of the world is likely to be misguided.
Skill mismatch facts
The Cedefop ESJ survey is the first EU-wide survey that has captured the dynamics of skill mismatch, namely how the skill mismatch status of individuals changes both when they change jobs and within their jobs. It shows that there is a marked degree of persistence in the skill mismatch status of people, particularly those who are in jobs that underutilise their skills (overskilled). About 8 in 10 overskilled workers remain in the same state over time.
But the survey also highlights that about 40% of employees who were matched in their previous job moved to a state of having 'mismatched' skills in their new job. About 20% decided to move to a job where their skills were below those needed, which is indicative that some people make conscious choices to move to demanding jobs even if they have skill gaps. The reason that some skill gap can be a good thing in this case is because such jobs are dynamic and offer ample skill development opportunities for the individual.
Cedefop expert Konstantinos Pouliakas presented Cedefop's research on skill shortages from the employer perspective. He highlighted that it is critical to be able to distinguish whether employers’ reported difficulties in finding talent are due to a genuine lack of skills in the labour force or because of issues such as uncompetitive wage offers by firms. This is crucial for being able to allocate scarce resources to the most effective of active labour market policies and vocational education and training (VET) programmes.
Mr Pouliakas highlighted that since 2006 EU countries have experienced divergent experiences in skill mismatch. Few EU countries have moved towards a situation of widespread skill shortages, whereas most have seen their recruitment difficulties subdued as unemployment has risen markedly. Nevertheless, since 2011 many EU economies are shifting towards a situation of higher recruitment bottlenecks coinciding with falling unemployment rates.
University graduate or apprentice?
Professor Ken Mayhew of SKOPE, Oxford University and Maastricht University, corroborated Cedefop’s findings by arguing that evidence from the UK shows a marked divergence between the type of degree needed to be hired and the degree needed to actually do the job. He said that in most cases the true question is whether hiring a university graduate is better than hiring another graduate from an upper secondary VET school. In some cases, he added, evidence shows that an apprentice can be more productive than a university graduate from an unrelated field, so the true issue for policy is to focus on when and what type of skill mismatch is costly for labour markets.
Dan Andrews, senior economist of the OECD, presented research on the relationship between skill mismatch and labour productivity. He showed that there is a strong negative relation between the incidence of overskilling and productivity in OECD countries. This can be explained by the fact that there are important reallocation effects – firms that hire overskilled workers prevent those skills from being used by other firms in the economy.
He showed evidence that public policies such as easing product market regulation and housing policies can be key to enabling more effective labour reallocation across firms in the economy. This could have marked beneficial effects on labour productivity of some OECD economies – for instance, skill mismatch can account for about one-fifth of the difference in labour productivity between the US and Italy.
Cedefop expert Jasper van Loo spoke of the need for synergy, while European Commission's Director of Skills Detlef Eckert focused on the implementation of the skills guarantee, which forms part of the Commission's New skills agenda for Europe.
You can find a continuous stream of information on the ESJ survey on the Cedefop website.
A wide range of indicators on skill use at work and skill mismatch, including population breakdowns, based on the Cedefop ESJ survey have been uploaded on the 'Matching skills and jobs' section of the Skills Panorama website.
Skills Panorama is being developed so that data on current and anticipation labour market trends, derived from Cedefop's skill forecasts and the ESJ survey, can be effectively translated to the audience in a reliable and smart way.
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Cedefop’s European skills and jobs survey (ESJ survey) shows that by facilitating transparency of qualifications and skills as well as providing better skills intelligence, EU education, training and skill policies can significantly boost mobility of groups in need. However, many EU Member States are still treating education and training tools in silos.
In the sixth in a series of articles on insights from the European skills and jobs (ESJ) survey, Cedefop expert Konstantinos Pouliakas looks at how this can change.
He notes that 'to affect citizen’s lives the New skills agenda for Europe must ensure that the tools build on and complement each other.'
Cedefop’s ESJ survey was carried out in 2014 in all 28 EU Member States, collecting information on the match of the skills of about 49 000 EU workers.
Read the whole article.
#ESJsurvey INSIGHTS No 6 - Tools for a new #EUSkillsAgenda: a tale of synergy or isolation?
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The mobility scoreboard for initial vocational education and training (IVET), a new tool to assist policy-makers in the area of learning mobility developed by Cedefop in close cooperation with the European Commission, was presented at an event in Thessaloniki on 3 June.
A prototype with information on 28 countries (26 EU Member States, Iceland and Norway) is available on the Cedefop website, while the interactive online tool is being finalised and will be launched during the vocational education and training (VET) week in December.
Cedefop Director James Calleja told participants in the event that mobility of learners should be seen as the rule, not the exception, and called the scoreboard a VET reform system. ‘People must learn about mobility as early as possible, as they will be mobile throughout their working life; for young people, especially, mobility is key,’ he said.
Participants included Erasmus+ agencies, IVET institutions, companies involved in mobility projects, teachers and trainers, guidance personnel, students’ associations, Cedefop’s ReferNet partners and EU-level stakeholders.
Cedefop’s Head of Department for VET Systems and Institutions Loukas Zahilas said that the scoreboard’s objective is to help move ahead in mobility by looking at factors that slow it down.
Cedefop expert Guy Tchibozo, the project leader, presented the mobility scoreboard focusing on 10 key areas for action and asked participants for their feedback to help finalise the online tool.
The scoreboard offers policy-makers, stakeholders and users EU-level overviews of countries’ structures, policies and performance, using maps, indicators and tables. It also provides country-specific information and analyses through country scorecards and fiches.
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Cooperation between employment and education authorities and Cedefop to equip Greek people with the skills needed to find and stay in employment was the topic of a seminar on 28 June in Thessaloniki.
The event, a joint initiative by Thomas Händel MEP, Chair of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee and Cedefop, explored how employability could attract more jobs in the labour market.
In her speech, Greek Alternate Minister for Labour Rania Antonopoulou expressed guarded optimism about employment trends in the country despite unemployment remaining exceptionally high at 24.1% (March 2016).
She told the more than 50 participants that the Greek government has taken various measures to boost employment including setting up a skills anticipation mechanism in just eight months: ‘This is just the first step and the system needs improvement, however we can use it to find out what kind of skills the labour market is looking for and focus our resources in training people accordingly.’
Ms Antonopoulou added: ‘We have a rapidly changing labour market with globalisation and with the new targets this government has set in terms of the development strategy for the country. It is only through cooperation and close links with the private sector and with organisations like Cedefop that we will manage to make the transition as best as possible during these very difficult times.’
Cedefop Director James Calleja referred to studies that show the extent of the skills problem created by the economic crisis in Greece. More than 250 000 people have left the country and are currently employed abroad, he said, adding that more than 640 000 people will need to change sector as two thirds of the jobs lost are not recoverable.
‘I strongly believe that the way out of this critical situation must pass through education, training and employment,’ argued Mr Calleja and stressed: ‘Permanent employment nowadays means permanent employability and Cedefop’s aim is to promote employability, help Member States resolve unemployment issues, give people the opportunity to train and develop apprenticeships.’
Cedefop support
In this context, Cedefop has been supporting Greek authorities by reviewing the existing apprenticeship system, monitoring the development of the national qualifications framework and contributing to the national skills anticipation mechanism for the identification of emerging skills and labour market needs and their matching to vocational education and training (VET) supply.
Head of Department for VET Systems and Institutions Loukas Zahilas told participants that ‘Cedefop places particular emphasis on its cooperation with the Greek authorities having a consistently good relationship and providing technical support to the degree its remit and resources allow.’
Kostas Chrysogonos MEP said that Cedefop is now more important than ever. He noted that in Greece there are only 3.6 million active job positions out of a total population of 11 million, with young people and women being the most vulnerable. He added that the seminar could ‘prompt better use of apprenticeship, an excellent way of bridging education and employment.’
Kostadinka Kuneva MEP, a member of the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee, expressed her wish that Cedefop’s studies be exploited more by European governments and the committee itself.
Minister visit
Ms Antonopoulou visited Cedefop on 29 June to get a first-hand account of the agency’s work by management and experts. Among other issues, they discussed the ongoing thematic country review on apprenticeship Cedefop is conducting in Greece and the agency’s technical support to the skills anticipation mechanism implementation phase.
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Cedefop Director James Calleja and Head of Department for VET Systems and Institutions Loukas Zahilas were keynote speakers in College and Institutes Canada’s (CICAN’s) 45th annual conference in Quebec City on 29 to 31 May.
Addressing over 820 vocational education and training (VET) practitioners, the Cedefop Director said that ‘to improve the image of VET, skills must become the new language of education and training.’
Mr Calleja spoke about the process leading to the development of VET at European level – from Copenhagen to the Riga conclusions. He said that the process has been long but rewarding for many EU Member States who have acted promptly to reform VET systems and introduce European policies and tools that benefit learners in formal, non-formal and informal learning environments.
‘VET is always called upon when unemployment spirals up, when people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) increase, when adult skills are missing, when early leavers become a social burden and when mismatching of skills frustrates young and older workers and employers,’ he added.
Parity of esteem
Mr Calleja noted that the various declarations from Copenhagen to Riga have provided a useful roadmap to many Member States and social partners to engage in a rethinking of education and training and in bridging the gap created by the separation of education from employment targets. ‘A lot has been achieved since 2002 but much more needs to be accomplished to ensure that VET enjoys the same parity of esteem as other sectors of education,’ he said.
Echoing European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility Marianne Thyssen's approach to the acquisition of skills, Mr Calleja stressed that Europe is at the crossroads of recognising that skills for life and skills for jobs do not contradict each other: ‘They overlap and enrich a person's curriculum increasing his or her chances of employment throughout working life. Behavioural skills and professional and vocational skills are equally in demand by employers who seek knowledgeable and hands-on individuals that are also flexible, adaptable and possess the right attitudes.’
Mr Calleja touched upon challenges and targets that many Member States have set in their reform process: to change the image of VET, increase quality assurance, promote work-based learning and apprenticeships, create conditions for mobility, and involve social partners at all stages of the VET process. Canada and Europe have many of these challenges in common, and sharing knowledge is an enriching experience.
European tools
Mr Zahilas presented Cedefop’s and European Commission’s work on the European tools, specifically on the latest European qualifications framework (EQF) and national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) developments, the learning outcomes approach and the work on creating synergies between them.
Canada has a keen interest on such developments being one of very few countries not working in this direction. It seems that this is changing and they are considering working towards a Canadian qualifications framework.
Learning together
Messrs Calleja and Zahilas presented Cedefop’s role in VET cooperation at European level in the workshop ‘EU cooperation: learning together – working together’. For more than a decade, the EU has prioritised VET reform to raise skill levels and improve employment prospects providing enterprises with the skills they need. Progress has been made as educational attainment is rising, VET systems are becoming more flexible and VET is increasingly available at post-secondary and tertiary levels. European cooperation has had a strong and positive impact on these developments.
Cooperation with Canada
On the occasion of the conference, the Cedefop representatives met with Vice-President of International Partnerships at CICAN Paul Brennan and Alex Stephens, specialist in evaluation and learning.
The discussion focused on the cooperation between Canada and the European Union on education and training and the willingness of the Canadian government to further strengthen it, as well as Cedefop's work on policy monitoring and green skills. The Canadian system, in which provinces and territories have full autonomy in implementing education and training policies, and the lack of a Ministry of Education at federal level, were also discussed. It was agreed to continue exchanging information on areas of mutual interest.
A model for Africa
The Cedefop officials also met with an African delegation consisting of West African Economic and Monetary Union’s (UEMOA’s) Augustin Niango (Director of Commissioner’s cabinet, Burkina Faso) and Efia Assignon (counsellor on international development).
The African delegation requested the meeting to discuss Cedefop's experiences and work on European cooperation in education and training, the open method of coordination and the policy monitoring mechanisms in place. UEMOA is trying to follow the EU model of VET cooperation and Cedefop's insights were considered valuable for their future planning.
Mr Zahilas also spoke at a pre-conference panel discussion about VET and climate change which is at the forefront of the global agenda. He referred to Cedefop’s work on green skills and the expected impact of environmental and climate change policies on future skills demand within and across sectors.
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At a high level conference held in Sofia on 16 and 17 June to discuss the result orientation of the cohesion policy, Cedefop Director James Calleja said that cohesion funds have a dual role: to promote the ‘think European, act local’ idea and ensure universal access to the acquisition of skills and qualifications.
Cedefop's online resources and activities provide invaluable data and policy orientations to address disadvantaged groups such as low-skilled adults, early leavers, people not in employment, education or training (NEETs), the unemployed and those whose jobs mismatch their qualifications, talent and aspirations.
Speaking in the workshop on skills, Mr Calleja said that Cedefop is resourced to support the implementation of the New skills agenda for Europe. ‘As an EU agency focused on skills, qualifications and employability, we can support a better performance with European Social Fund (ESF) funding,’ he added.
Human capital development, social inclusion and employability are not only at the heart of the cohesion policy for growth and jobs; they also form the backbone of the skills agenda. More needs to be done to help over 70 million European adults who lack adequate reading, writing, numeracy and digital skills.
This is one of vocational education and training’s (VET's) highest priorities for the next five years. Mr Calleja argued that ‘VET efforts and funds must focus on a results strategy agenda, on vulnerable groups and on a performance framework based on the rationalisation of resources and targeted needs.’
The conference, organised by the Regional Policy of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (EMPL), brought together more than 450 participants – managing authorities, evaluation experts, the academia and stakeholders from across Europe – for a dialogue and analysis of achievements and challenges of the cohesion policy.
It was inaugurated by Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Crețu. Mr Borissov spoke about the leap of quality in the life of many Bulgarians who benefitted from structural funds. Commissioner Cretu said that the use of ESF should primarily serve to change people's lives and ensure that no one is left behind.
Deputy Prime Ministers Peter Pellegrini and Tomislav Donchev of Slovakia and Bulgaria respectively noted that the economic and social crisis undermines development, but argued that challenges and not crisis should steer policy.
Santiago Loranca Garcia, Head of Evaluation and Impact Assessment of DG EMPL said that out of EUR 115 billion allocated to ESF projects across Europe, EUR 91.7 billion were spent up to the end of 2014. The projects attracted more than 94 million participants of whom 8.9 million went into employment, 8.6 million gained a qualification and 0.3 started a business. Women counted for more than 51% of all participants.
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Cedefop has been conducting monitoring of the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) implementation since 2010; this report covers developments from mid-2013 till 2015.
It is based on national responses provided by the ECVET users’ group from 28 EU Member States and four EFTA countries. The report examines whether existing credit systems provide conditions for individuals to have their learning accumulated or transferred towards a qualification. It examines key aspects: whether qualifications are based on learning outcomes and organised in units; whether individual units are assessed and validated for further transfer and accumulation; whether units are assigned credit points; and whether VET providers use memoranda of understanding and learning agreements to understand better the learning outcomes they provide. The report also focuses on the ways ECVET is promoted among stakeholders and beneficiaries and on examples of support materials that can be useful to ECVET promoters throughout Europe.
ECVET in EuropeENDOI: 10.2801/946187TI-BC-16-003-EN-NISBN: 978-92-896-2186-117/06/20161.24 MB
ECVET in EuropeENDOI: 10.2801/554646TI-BC-16-003-EN-EISBN: 978-92-896-2188-527/06/2016616.66 KB
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The year under review has been marked by a number of events that will inevitably have an impact on the immediate future of Cedefop and European vocational education and training (VET).
The celebration of Cedefop’s 40th anniversary, the Riga conclusions and the renewed ET 2020, the internal reorganisation of the Centre and its planning for the new cycle 2017-20 have given it a new lease of life and more vigour to work harder for
VET.
Jahresbericht 2015DEDOI: 10.2801/014374TI-AB-16-001-DE-N ISBN: 978-92-896-2174-827/09/201616.48 MB
Annual report 2015ENDOI: 10.2801/64476TI-AB-16-001-EN-NISBN: 978-92-896-2172-402/06/201616.37 MB
Rapport annuel 2015FRDOI: 10.2801/71602TI-AB-16-001-FR-NISBN: 978-92-896-2175-527/09/201616.28 MB
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