Education plays a vital role in improving people’s lives around the world, from increasing tolerance and employment to empowering women and keeping hunger away. The impact of education reaches out to almost every aspect of one’s life, shows the infographics published by UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report.

Two reports have been released recently on adult education. The first one, entitled “Adult and continuing education in Europe: Using public policy to secure a growth in skills”, proposes a number of policy priorities to support the growth of adult and continuing education and exploit the wealth of research and research tools available. The second one is the final report on “Quality in the adult learning sector” analyses the scope, content and implementation of quality approaches, standards and other relevant recent developments such as the development and implementation of accreditation systems and institutions, in the adult learning sector.

EUCIS-LLL organises its 3rd Lifelong Learning Week in the European Parliament, Brussels, from 2 to 6 December 2013. This year, the Week will have a particular focus on the upcoming European Elections of Spring 2014. At this occasion EUCIS-LLL will launch its Manifesto for the European elections and more than 10 civil society events (see the calendar) will take place in order to provide ideas on how to modernise education and training systems in Europe. You can already register to the EUCIS-LLL Roundtable on our Manifesto “Buidling together the future of learning” (3 December 9h30-12h45) as well as our seminar “Making the case for European civic education” (4 December 9h-12h) jointly organised witht the European Civic Forum and our international conference on “Measuring progress in lifelong learning” (5 December 9h-13h).

Last week the second edition of the European Education, Training and Youth Forum took place (minutes soon available in our members’ area). Entitled “Working together for reforms”, the Forum aims to emphasise the need for policy makers and key stakeholders to work in partnership for the successful implementation of reforms at national and regional level, in particular through the opportunities offered by the new EU education, training and youth programme “Erasmus+”. Commission Head of Directorate on Europe 2020 Pierre Mairesse presented the first insights of the Education and Training Monitor 2013 (soon available) and evoked the need to tackle current challenges in a cross-sectorial approach, involving also civil society partners. EUCIS-LLL President David Lopez presented the outcomes of the EUCIS-LLL consultation led prior to the Forum, which had mobilised more than 733 respondents. Read also our press release published before the event.

FREREF, the European Regions Foundation for Research in Education and Training, will organise on 21-22 November a conference in Brussels entitled “Territorial cooperation and the European Social Fund: what new practices 2014-2020”, to assess and debate how European regions will cope with, exploit and benefit from upcoming EU programmes. New possibilities for regional cooperation and development of innovative practices will be discussed to tackle current challenges faced at regional level, such as youth unemployment. The first day will be devoted in particular to the ESF and INTERREG while the Regional Council of FREREF will pursue discussion on the following day focusing more on Erasmus+. Register until 15 November on FREREF website.

On 22 October in European Parliament plenary sitting in Strasbourg was voted MEP Katarina Nevedalova’s (S&D) report on the 2012 Commission’s Communication on “Rethinking Education: investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes” (see S&D press release and interview with rapporteurs). EUCIS-LLL welcomes the strong will of Members of Parliament to express their opinion on such an important political document. Most of the concerns expressed by EUCIS-LLL have been taken into account by the Rapporteur, notably on quality of and access to education and on a lifelong, lifewide approach to learning. The report also echoes EUCIS-LLL plea for a genuine and permanent civil dialogue when it “Calls for learners and the organisations to which they are attached to be involved in decision-making processes concerning education, and highlights the fact that learning should be based on a structured dialogue with learners”. See EUCIS-LLL press release and webpage on Rethinking Education and notably OBESSU’s reaction to the adoption of the text.

On 17 October the Commission and Member States met to see how governments could concretely implement their Youth Guarantee Implementation Plans, on a financial and technical point of view. The Youth Guarantee Recommendation was adopted in April 2013 and is part of the Youth Employment Package; it is aimed at contributing to reduce critical levels of youth unemployment in Europe by making sure that young people under 25 cannot stay more than four months after finishing education or becoming unemployed without being proposed a job, an internship, a training, etc. Member States with regions of youth unemployment above 25% are also eligible for additional EU funding through the European Social Fund. The European Youth Forum attended the event and called for the involvement of youth organisations national youth guarantee schemes.

How is education currently organised in your country? How does one structure compare to another? The 2013/14 schematic diagrams on the ‘Structure of the European education systems‘ will give you easy answers to these questions. The diagrams show you what mainstream schooling looks like in 33 European countries and how different levels of education, from pre-primary to tertiary, are broken down. The diagrams also indicate the general ages of students and the programme duration for each level.

On 23-24 October 2013 the Commission (DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Education and Culture) launched the ESCO portal, an open and free of charge website aimed at creating a standard terminology of skills, competences, occupations and qualifications for education and training systems and the labour market. The ESCO portal is multilingual (22 languages) as the purpose is to ease learners and workers’ mobility across the EU by a better recognition of their learning outcomes abroad thanks to the same semantics. ESCO is meant to be in line with other EU transparency and recognition tools (i.e. EQF). Learn more on the website and read EUCIS-LLL infonote.