Cedefop newsletter

The event had a central thematic on “20th Years together” aiming to celebrate the anniversary of the 2024 enlargement of the EU with the accession of 10 additional countries. On 1 May 2004, 20 years ago, our European family grew bigger.

The citizens of Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia became citizens of the EU. Overnight, our Union became a greater political, economic and cultural entity, stretching from Tallinn to Lisbon, from Valletta to Stockholm, from Dublin to Nicosia. Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia’s accession a few years later has made our Union even stronger.

The aim of the meeting was to:

• induct the newcomers, introduce them to the tools available, and provide assistance;
• inform partners of the latest EU policy developments on VET, skills and qualifications;
• take stock of the work carried out in 2024 and the outcomes published and disseminated;
• prepare the 2025 work plan: VET policy reporting, Spotlight, news, visibility actions, etc.;
• foster partnership and knowledge-sharing through interactive (joint) presentations of national developments, debates, etc.;
• hold individual meetings for deeper cooperation among members and between members and Cedefop experts.
• reinstall a physical network dynamic of cooperation and shared reflection by convening in a physical open space, which will encourage creative reflection on how partners would like ReferNet to develop in the 2024-27 period.

Participants also had an opportunity to exchange good dissemination practices in a dedicated space where they coul display their national publications, newsletters, videos, promotional items, etc and benefit from bilateral meetings.

Watch the recording in YouTube       

Cedefop experts presented their research work and available tools, building on over a decade of experience in analysing qualifications developments. 

Qualifications and credentials have evolved significantly in recent years, reflecting the shifting demands of society, the labour market and advancements in technology. While degrees earned from formal education and training remain important in Europe and efforts to promote their relevance and transparency have increased, new types of credentials are increasingly promoted as a complementary way of valuing learning. This allows individuals to collect and ‘stack’ learning experiences in a flexible way, at their own pace and through the course of their lives.  As a result, the landscape of qualifications and credentials is becoming more dynamic and inclusive, accommodating diverse learning styles and backgrounds. But how does this change occur and at what pace? Which are the EU tools promoting these changes? How useful are they for end users?

Join this virtual gathering to engage with experts and explore how these questions apply in different national contexts.

Join the social media discussion  #qualifications #credentials #learningoutcomes

The presentations, posters, programme and photos of the event are available in the Downloads section below. 

Recent improvements in autonomous digital technologies, such as fast developments in generative artificial intelligence (AI), can markedly affect skill demand in workplaces and foster skill mismatches. Technological change can substitute human capital, resulting in automation and job loss, but it can also contribute to mainly high-skilled work, augmenting labour and improving job quality.

Policy debate has recently been calling for a ‘human-centred’ technological change; yet further research is needed on how new digital technologies may have negative or positive labour market outcomes for workers, and on how they may interact with their job tasks, upskilling needs and overall job quality. Greater focus should also be placed on the relationship between digitalisation and worker upskilling/reskilling needs, and on how these may be governed by different forms of work organisation. Deeper understanding of the interaction between technology adoption in workplaces, (algorithmic) management practices and investment in workers’ continuing skill development may assist in the design of a human-capital-friendly regulatory framework.

This Cedefop workshop focused on investigating underlying factors of different forms of joined agency between humans and technology, and how these may differ across various workplace environments with diverse human resource management practices. Understanding the conditions under which different digital technologies may have positive or negative implications for workers’ upskilling and skills matching outcomes is a key aim of the workshop. To achieve it, experts presented new evidence, mainly but not exclusively based on data from Cedefop’s second European skills and jobs survey (ESJS2) microdata.

The workshop was organised around the following themes:

• How do (new) digital technologies interact with human capital and what factors determine if there is complementarity or substitutability of technology for skills?
• How do (new) digital technologies increase or  reduce workers’ skilling needs?
• How is the effect of digitalisation on the labour market mediated by different job-skill requirements and alternative forms of work organisation?
• What types of skill mismatches are associated with the adoption of new digital technologies in workplaces?
• How does the adoption of digital technologies in firms interact with their human resource management and skill utilisation strategies?
• What drivers and policies may influence workers’ participation in education and training activities to cope with new digital technologies?

The keynote lecture was given by Professor Chris Warhurst, Director of Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick.

Professor Chris Warhurst FRSA FAcSS is Director of the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick in the UK. He is an internationally recognised expert on job quality and skills. He has published 18 books including the Oxford Handbook of Job Quality (2022) and the Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training (2017). He is currently the UK lead for a Horizon Europe project on Industry 5.0 (Bridges 5.0) and about to lead a new UK project to create healthy jobs. He is/has been an expert advisor to the UK, Australian and Scottish Governments and the OECD.

Participation in the event was by invitation only to authors of accepted papers from the following call for submissions and to a limited number of registered individuals.

Listen to the recordings

Plenary session   BO session 1  BO session 2   BO session 3 

Cedefop presented the key findings of its analysis on the coherence and impact of two decades of European policy initiatives aimed at promoting lifelong learning opportunities for individuals. The initiatives analysed span across different policy areas, such as quality assurance, comparability, credit systems, validation of non-formal and informal learning and recognition of qualifications. The analysis also focused on changes observed at national level over the past two decades and identifies remaining challenges to learning mobility within and across countries. Alternative future policy scenarios on lifelong learning for 2040 were also presented and discussed with participants.

The conference aimed to encourage reflection and discussions on promoting systems that further encourage entering, re-entering and accumulation of learning across institutions, education and training systems, and countries for all types of learner. The event targeted a diverse group of stakeholders involved in shaping and influencing education and training policies. This included policy-makers at EU and national levels, academics, social partners, education and training institutions from various sub-sectors and levels of education, career and learning advisory services, businesses, and learners.
 

Registration is closed  

For this symposium, 'new fields' refers to fields, sectors or occupations (or as a consequence specialties and programmes) that were not previously typically offered through apprenticeships. These might be entirely new for apprenticeship programmes (i.e. where apprenticeship programmes were offered for the first time), or used to be very small in terms of enrolments/participation but are now becoming more central to apprenticeship-related policies and choices of individuals.  
The understanding of a 'new field' depends therefore on the national context.

Selected papers study a range of new programmes in health, financial services, ICT/digital industries, or teacher education. They also cover the emergence of new programmes or drastic revamp of existing ones  in more traditional sectors (e.g. construction, energy and food industries), in the light of the digital and green transitions.

Aspects that were discussed during the event:

• The use of skills intelligence to inform and drive the expansion to new fields (labour market responsiveness )
• The role of social partners and social dialogue in selecting and entering into new fields
• Addressing needs and opportunities of the twin transition
• Adapting the apprenticeship features to the needs of different fields
• Positioning apprenticeship programmes at new education and training levels
• Improving VET attractiveness through expansion to new fields
• Using the expansion to new fields to improve opportunities for women or other less represented groups to benefit from apprenticeships

The event included opening presentations from the OECD and Cedefop, discussion and Q&A sessions and a closing panel with representatives of governments, employers, trade unions, apprenticeship providers and learners. 

The joint Cedefop-OECD apprenticeship symposiums focus on education and training that can truly be understood as a quality apprenticeship. Not all initiatives to introduce or reinforce work-based learning in VET programmes would fall under apprenticeship. To see what is understood by the term apprenticeship(s), please refer to the European framework for quality and effective apprenticeships (2018) or the ILO Recommendation 208 concerning quality apprenticeships (2023) or the call for evidence (link below).

Key dates for paper authors:

• Call for evidence: 15 July - 5 September 2024
• Deadline for paper submissions: 25 October 2024
• Selection of papers: 15 November 2024
• Deadline for submitting presentations: 20 March 2025
• Symposium: 1 and 2 April 2025
• Deadline for submitting full papers for the subsequent publication: 2 May 2025

The 2025 symposium continues the joint work of Cedefop and the OECD on apprenticeships. Find out more about our past events and publications:

• 2023 Symposium on Apprenticeships and the digital transition, and the subsequent publication of papers
• 2021 Symposium on Apprenticeships for greener economies and societies, and the subsequent publication of papers
• 2019 Symposium on The next steps for apprenticeship, and the subsequent publication of papers