- 2023Legislative process
- 2024Implementation
Background
On 1 January 2023, new regulations were introduced in the Education Act regarding initial mapping and validation within municipal adult education. The background to this change was that individual's education and skills needs to be acknowledge faster meet the needs of the labour market.
Objectives
The purpose of the legislative changes is to strengthen the role of validation within the education system and the labour market, ensuring that individuals' skills are recognised regardless of how they were acquired. The amendments also aimed to promote lifelong learning by creating a framework in which individuals can continuously update and develop their skills. Additionally, the changes sought to facilitate the supply of skills, allowing employers to more easily match the right competencies with the right jobs. Validation can also serve as a tool for inclusion, enabling both newcomers and others who are outside the job market to establish themselves more quickly by making their prior skills visible and acknowledged.
Improved validation is intended to contribute to a more efficient supply of skills, a quicker establishment in the job market, and greater opportunities for career transitions throughout working life.
Description
In 2023, regulations were introduced in the Education Act regarding initial mapping and validation within municipal adult education. The legislative proposals in the bill entail the following in brief:
- a requirement is introduced for the local municipality to ensure that anyone wishing to have their skills mapped prior to education or assessment within adult education is offered an initial mapping;
- a duty is established for the provider of adult education to ensure that a student in need of validation is offered this service;
- the concept of validation receives a clearer definition;
- it is clarified what is required in terms of documentation following a validation.
The legislative changes came into effect in the Education Act on 1 January 2023.
The national agency for education is supporting the municipalities implementing the new legislation.
Bodies responsible
- National Agency for Education
Target groups
Learners
- Learners with migrant background, including refugees
- Adult learners
- Unemployed and jobseekers
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.
European priorities in VET
VET Recommendation
- Flexibility and progression opportunities at the core of VET
Osnabrück Declaration
- Establishing a new lifelong learning culture - relevance of continuing VET and digitalisation
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). New right to an initial mapping and assessment within municipal adult education: Sweden. In Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Timeline of VET policies in Europe (2024 update) [Online tool].
https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/timeline-vet-policies-europe/search/46950