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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

When teachers grow, so do their students. Across Europe, the evidence is clear: investing in teachers’ professional development drives better learning outcomes and helps build a skilled, resilient workforce. Yet, too many vocational education and training (VET) teachers still face persistent barriers to developing their skills and advancing their careers. 

Vocational education and training (VET) teachers are shaping the future of nearly 43% of Europe’s youth aged 15 to 19. Every day, they help young people build the skills, confidence, and curiosity they’ll need for life and work.

For teachers to continue inspiring others, they themselves need to be supported, healthy, and prepared for the challenges of today — and tomorrow.

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

Cedefop’s (the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training) mission is to promote vocational education and training (VET) for excellence, making young people more employable and empowered with the knowledge, skills and competences needed to build a bright future. This may only happen, if we strive for safe and inclusive educational systems, that care and respect the needs and the well-being of every single learner, enabling them to thrive emotionally, socially, and academically. 

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

The end of the year is a great moment to reflect on past achievements and lessons learnt, take stock of activities carried out and set new objectives for the year to come. It is a moment we wish to share with all of you, our Ambassadors, with a compilation of what we, Cedefop VET4Youth team and Ambassadors for tackling early leaving from VET, have achieved together. Our New Year’s resolution is to further strengthen our collaboration in 2024!

While celebrating the European Year of Skills and with VET institutions striving to enable individuals to reach their full learning potential, 1 in 10 young people in Europe still does not qualify in upper secondary education (9.6% in 2022). These low-educated young people, known as early leavers from education and training, are more likely to experience lower levels of professional accomplishment, well-being and life satisfaction.