European Commission Vice-President Margarítis Schinás, Education Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, and Employment Commissioner Nicolas Schmit presented two proposals for EU Council recommendations on Friday 10 December that they hope will enable the European Union to achieve its adult learning goals.
The EU committed itself at the Porto Social Summit to ensuring that 60% of European adults participate in training activities each year by 2030 (see EUROPE 12716/3).
“ We have a situation where there is still unemployment, especially among young people, because there is a mismatch in our labour market between the skills people have or don’t have and shortages in certain sectors. We need to address this situation and these shortages now. We need to organise training policies much more actively to reduce these mismatches”, said Nicolas Schmit.
The European Commission’s first proposal, on “individual training accounts”, therefore aims to ensure that “everyone” can have access to training “at any time in their lives”. This includes unemployed people.
Currently, less than half of all adults in the EU report having participated in education or training over a 12-month period, the European Commission says in its proposal. And those who undertake training, it notes, are “not necessarily those who need it most”.
“Permanent employees are more likely than other adults to engage in learning (45% compared to 29%), and sectors, occupations and types of employment with higher proportions of low-skilled workers find themselves at the bottom of the upskilling ranking”, it notes.
Rights to training
The EU institution would like the EU27 to remove barriers to adult participation in training. In its proposed recommendations, it suggests the creation of a European tool for this purpose, namely “individual training accounts”.
These would be personal accounts, it explains, opened by the authorities in each State so that all working-age adults can “accumulate and preserve” their rights to training over time.
These accounts, the European Commission believes, should be coupled with career guidance, accreditation, and paid educational leave. A digital catalogue listing the training courses that could be financed in this framework would also be set up.
If the States are won over by this proposal, it would then be up to them to decide on the characteristics and financing of the training accounts.
Micro-credentials
The second proposal for recommendations concerns micro-credentials: the validation of learning outcomes related to a small learning event - a short course or training (see EUROPE 12703/22).
The European Commission would like to see this concept gain popularity in the EU, as well as the emergence of a common micro-credential model for the EU27.
It therefore invites the EU Council to adopt a clear definition of micro-credentials, to establish the main parameters for their characterisation, and to decide on the conditions under which they should be created and issued.
The European Commission indicates that it could, for its part, provide support to Member States by adapting existing European tools and services - for example, the User’s Guide to the European Credit Transfer System - to include micro-credentials.
It is also reportedly prepared to encourage the use of these credentials by European university alliances or by teacher training providers.
The European institution also confirms that the States are expected to work with it to improve ongoing data collection on micro-credentials at EU level.
To view the proposals: https://bit.ly/3EMbC1I; https://bit.ly/30fWefd (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)