Commission staff working document
: THE IMPORTANCE OF LIFELONG LEARNING
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- 1.1: PLANNED NEW PROPOSAL ON THE VALIDATION OF INFORMAL LEARNING
- 1.2: THE EUROPASS FRAMEWORK
- 1.3: EU POLICY ON LIFELONG LEARNING AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
1: THE IMPORTANCE OF LIFELONG LEARNINGSome recent initiatives in the lifelong learning policy area are likely to have a strong, albeit indirect, impact on the consequences of restructuring, as they support people and organisations in managing transitions. These initiatives all share a feature that is proving to be a significant factor of innovation, actually triggering wide-ranging developments at national level: a strong focus on competences. While developing, assessing and certifying competences has always been considered part of education and training, the systematic organisation of the provision, assessment and accreditation of learning around learners’ outcomes in a lifelong learning perspective is a relatively innovative approach. The action that brings forward this approach in the most high-profile and comprehensive way is the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (EQF), established through a Recommendation of the European Parliament and the Council in April 2008.39 The EQF is a reference framework in which eight qualification levels are defined in terms of learning outcomes: ie what a learner knows, understands and is able to do after a learning experience, as opposed to learning inputs such as the length of a learning experience or the type of institution. This enables the EQF to connect to different national systems and to cut across sub-systems such as higher education and vocational training. EU Member States are in the process of referencing their qualification levels to the eight EQF levels. The EQF will then act as a translation device to make qualifications more readable and understandable to employers, individuals and institutions, so that workers and learners can better use their qualifications across countries, systems and sectors. Implementing the EQF means that national qualification levels should also be defined in terms of learning outcomes, which in some Member States and systems amounts to a radical change of approach. However, all Member States have started developing a national qualifications framework (NQF) based on learning outcomes and covering the whole span of qualifications. It can be considered that Ireland, France, Malta and the UK have implemented frameworks, and 10 more countries are now entering an early implementation stage. This clearly indicates the widespread consensus on the need to define qualifications — and consequently the provision and the assessment of learning — through what people can do at the end of their learning process. For an overview of the implementation of a NQF, see figure 2.1 below. Figure 2.1: Number of EU Member States with a national qualifications framework, 2002-2014 
Source: European Commission. The consistent application of this approach should prove specifically helpful in situations of crisis, when companies may need to undergo radical reorganisation and many workers change tasks, jobs, companies and trade and often need specific further training. This approach helps companies, institutions and individual workers to gain a clearer and more comprehensive overview of the skills and competences available to them, so that they can make better informed choices when confronted with the need to reorganise. The focus on competences makes it easier to match tasks and workers, to train workers and to take into account both the skills developed through formal learning and those developed through work experience. The development of qualification frameworks based on learning outcomes is expected to promote schemes for the validation of non-formal and informal learning outcomes, including the accreditation of prior experience: countries that already have established national frameworks based on learning outcomes also feature effective validation arrangements. For instance, all qualifications included in the French national register can also be obtained through the validation pathway. Consistent with the EQF approach, the European credit system for vocational education and training (ECVET), adopted in 2009, organises the transfer of credits from one qualification system to another (or from one learning ‘pathway’ to another) around the assessment and validation of the learning outcomes of individuals. This allows learners to accumulate the required learning outcomes for a given qualification over time, in a variety of situations and in more than one country. This offers a valuable opportunity in a society characterised by flexible occupational and learning pathways — an element that may grow dramatically in times of economic crisis. 1.1: PLANNED NEW PROPOSAL ON THE VALIDATION OF INFORMAL LEARNINGThe regular inventory of national experiences of validation of non-formal and informal learning prepared by the European Commission and the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Cedefop, shows that such experiences and their impact are growing. However, the fact that all European countries are now engaged in establishing national qualification frameworks creates the conditions for a more systematic and comprehensive approach to validation. Measures aimed at developing this will be included in a proposal for a Council Recommendation on the promotion and recognition of the validation of non-formal and informal learning, planned for adoption in 2012. As a practical tool to support authorities in setting up and managing validation arrangements, a set of European guidelines was recently published and will regularly be updated.40 1.2: THE EUROPASS FRAMEWORKThe competence approach applied at system level by qualification frameworks and credit transfer systems has an indirect but significant impact on individual workers and learners. A more direct service — also organised around the concept of competence — is provided by instruments that specifically target citizens as users, such as the documents made available within the Europass framework. Europass allows EU citizens to present their qualifications and skills in a way that employers can understand and appreciate. Further, the Europass Certificate Supplement describes certificates in terms of learning outcomes and in some Member States is part and parcel of the national qualification framework. The Europass CV is a tool that is increasingly used by EU citizens — about 10 000 each day — and aims to help people to highlight their skills and competences by providing both information on formal education and, when available, work experience. Figure 2.2 below charts the growth in the number of completed Europass CVs from 2005 to 2010. Figure 2.2: Europass CV completed (daily average) 
Source: European Commission. Through the language of competences, the Europass CV helps communication between jobseekers and employers, and as such can be a valuable tool in the context of restructuring, although it rests on self-declaration on the part of the applicant. Information on skills developed during specific experiences, such as traineeships or periods of work, can however be given by the company or other organisation that has hosted the experience. The Europass Mobility is a specific Europass document, which currently enables citizens to document experiences involving transnational mobility, such as traineeships in a company abroad. Its use is currently also being tested for home country experiences, with a view to laying the ground for the development of a more general Europass Skills Passport, which would record the skills and competences acquired by citizens in any setting, including in particular work experience and volunteering. In addition to these tools, the Europass Skills Passport, in combination with the Europass CV and with formal qualification supplements, describing learning outcomes as promoted by the EQF and applied within national qualification frameworks, will provide a comprehensive portrait of its holders in terms of competences, supporting companies and individuals in their choices in the labour market. 1.3: EU POLICY ON LIFELONG LEARNING AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENTInformation, advice and guidance are crucial factors in enabling citizens to manage transitions, helping them to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their competence profile, make better informed decisions about further learning and employment opportunities and make effective use of validation schemes. Two EU Resolutions of the Education Council adopted in 200441 and 200842 have highlighted the need for strong guidance services throughout a worker’s life to equip them with the skills to manage their learning and careers and the transitions between and within education/training and work. Member States were invited by those Resolutions to take action to modernise and strengthen their guidance systems, paying particular attention to the development of career management skills; accessibility of services; quality assurance and coordination of services. The Commission supports policy and practice in this area in a number of ways. Firstly, EU resources from the Lifelong Learning Programme are used to fund two European networks:
The increased frequency of transitions that citizens face over the course of their working life, coupled with greater diversity and mobility in education/training and the labour market, make effective lifelong guidance systems more important than ever. The successor to the Lisbon strategy — Europe 202044 — highlights in particular the need for guidance to improve young people’s entry into the labour market. Measures to strengthen guidance will form part of new initiatives being put forward in 2010 concerning the mobility of young people, combating early school leaving and new skills for jobs. Directory: pub -> ECD ECD -> Commission staff working document ECD -> Table of contents I instruments Error: Reference source not found ECD -> Table of annexes annex I: Glossary 4 ECD -> En commission of the european communities brussels, 12. 12. 2008 com(2008) 853 final annex annex II to VIII ECD -> Report from the commission to the european parliament and the council european community safa programme aggregated information report ECD -> Report from the commission european community safa programme ECD -> Commission of the european communities brussels, 24 2008 ECD -> Commission staff working document ECD -> Communication from the commission to the european parliament, the council, the european economic and social committee and the committee of the regions ECD -> Annex I iccat species Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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