Cedefop newsletter No 67 - February 2017

News

Here is the latest Cedefop newsletter:

Policy learning forum: VET as a solution to leaving education early

On 16 and 17 May 2017, Cedefop is organising a policy learning forum (PLF) with a focus on the contribution that VET can make towards reducing early leaving from education and training (ELET).

Event rationale and objectives

Leaving education early is linked to unemployment, social exclusion and poverty. VET institutions in some countries tend to be faced with high rates of drop outs. However, high quality, inclusive and flexible VET provision may prevent and remedy leaving education early. New evidence by Cedefop shows that VET can be a safety net for those at-risk learners in general education offering an alternative pathway and securing their retention in education and training. Also, VET offering a more practical, work-oriented route towards a qualification can magnetize early leavers back to education and training.

Facing up to early leaving from education and training requires a better understanding of the phenomenon, streamlining of existing initiatives and a strategic alliance between policy-makers, educators, employers, trade unions and civil society. The strategic importance of VET in attaining this goal is implicit in the New skills agenda for Europe, where the need for reinforced and updated skills features prominently.

Around 80 participants, national and local policy makers as well as institutional level actors from different European countries as well as representatives from other European and international organisations such as the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO-IBE, European Commission, ETF, etc. are invited to learn from the latest findings of Cedefop study on Leaving education early: Putting Vocational Education and Training (VET) centre stage and discuss the extent to which Member States are currently exploiting the potential of VET to contribute to reducing ELET and help to identify how to develop this further in the future.

During the event, participants will have the opportunity to navigate in the new electronic Europe-wide toolkit that Cedefop will launch to support the design and implementation of VET policies to tackle ELET. The toolkit aims to provide guidance and tools to policy makers and practitioners involved in the design and implementation of measures to tackle ELET on how to:

identify and monitor early leavers and learners at risk of ELET;
intervene to retain them in or bring them back to education or training;
evaluate measures to tackle ELET.

Methodology

The PLF will require active participation from all participants involved in dialogue, good practice description and exchange of experiences in the plenary session as well as in working groups.

The aim of the PLF is to support evidence-based policy making to tackle early leaving; to launch and pilot the associated toolkit, and to try to secure the commitment of those taking part to disseminating the toolkit at national and international levels. The toolkit will be used to inform the working group activities and subsequent plenary discussions.

The PLF will also enable participants to use Cedefop’s self-reflection tool to assess strengths and weaknesses of their policies (at national, regional or other level) and to provide an opportunity to learn from others who are working in the same field.

Agenda - VET as a solution to leaving education early - Policy learning forum

Policy learning forum: Vocational training for the long-term unemployed

Event rationale and objectives

The economic downturn has led to a marked increase in long-term unemployment (LTU). In 2015 there were almost 4 million more European citizens out of work for more than one year compared to 2007. Although recently employment growth has somewhat improved, in 2015 nearly half of the jobless in the EU were long-term unemployed, affecting almost 11 million people (4.5% of the active EU population). Close to two-thirds of them (6.8 million) have been out of work for more than two years (so-called very long-term unemployed, VLTU).

Addressing long-term unemployment is one of the key challenges of the EU’s jobs and growth agenda, as its persistence and higher risk of skills deterioration are barriers to labour market integration and lead to social exclusion. The recent Council recommendation on the labour market integration of the long-term unemployed and the European Commission’s New Skills Agenda for Europe call for a multi-faceted strategy that combines macroeconomic policy with better activation and skills policies. Such policies should include better skills profiling and validation, identification of skill needs in the local economy and targeted training combined with individualized career guidance and counselling. They depart from ‘work-first’ approaches to activation.

The aim of the policy learning forum is to inform approaches to VET within activation measures that put skill matching centre stage. The forum will seek to ‘put policy into practice’ by moving beyond theory and empirical analysis and towards a deeper understanding of features, mechanisms and triggers underpinning effectiveness of innovative examples from across the EU. The PLF will serve as a platform for debate and mutual learning for key stakeholders involved in the design and delivery of VET and skill matching programs as part of activation policies.

Methodology of the policy learning form

Following a similar format with other successful PLF’s undertaken by Cedefop, the PLF on ‘Skills matching policies for the long-term unemployed’ will require active participation from all participants:

All participants will need to submit a short written input summarising features of vocational training measures for the long term unemployed in their organisation or country and lessons learned from practice;
Case-study presenters will be asked to deliver more in-depth information to Cedefop to be used for short (1 page) schematic summaries of the initiatives they present at the forum;
During the forum participants are expected to actively contribute to the debate and exchange experience.

The PLF will build on Cedefop’s recent publication on ‘Tackling unemployment while addressing skill mismatch: Lessons from policy and practice in EU countries’