What is the initiative and where is it implemented (city or country, for example)?
Upskilling Pathways Recommendation is an initiative by The European Commission to improve the prospects of adults with low levels of educational qualifications. The Recommendation promotes pathway creation that enables adults to fill in the gaps in their literacy and numeracy skills and enhance their digital skills. Upskilling Pathways are accessible to adults with low qualifications. There are three key steps to the Upskilling Pathways: assessing skills, learning and mentoring, and validating prior skills, either by accessing employment or granting certification of prior qualifications.
According to the programme, people with low qualifications who need to improve and/or develop specific skills are at a higher risk of exclusion from the workforce and struggle with long-term unemployment. The programme is flexible and allows member states to consider how to modify their overall strategies in accordance with the recommendations. For instance, Ireland has set an aim to ‘support the upskilling of 40,000 employees by 2025, while over 100,000 would benefit from literacy or community education’ (European Commission, 2016; CITO, n.d.a).
How was the initiative established? How was it implemented?
The Recommendations were adopted by the European Council in December 2016 and apply to adults over the age of 25. Member states have cooperated closely with social partners and education and training providers in accordance with national legislation, circumstances and available resources to achieve the following:
1. Offer adults with low qualifications (for instance, adults who have not completed upper secondary education due to hindering circumstances and are not eligible for support under the Youth Guarantee) access to upskilling pathways. The pathways provide them with an opportunity to acquire a basic level of literacy, numeracy and digital competence and become active members of society by developing a broader set of skills, knowledge and competences relevant to the current labour market.
2. Identify priority target groups for the delivery of upskilling pathways at the national level, considering national circumstances, available resources, existing national strategies as well as gender, diversity and various sub-groups in the targeted population.
3. Base the design of the upskilling pathways on three key steps: the assessment of skills, learning and mentoring, and validation of acquired skills.
In Ireland, the Department of Education and Skills formed an Upskilling Pathways Steering Group. It identified people in employment with low skills as one of the priority target groups. The initiative aimed to provide them with flexible learning opportunities to improve their literacy, numeracy and digital competence. Completing the training offered by the initiative would result in progressing towards higher European Qualifications Framework (EQF) levels relevant for the labour market and active participation in society (Lyons, 2020).
Which stakeholders are involved in the design and/or implementation of the initiative? Which sectors do they represent?
Both private and public sectors are represented. Active participants are the Department of Further Education and Training, Skillnet Ireland, local authorities, Regional Skills Fora, Education and Training Boards, Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, employees and employers (Lyons, 2020).
What are the impacts of the initiative in terms of facilitating lifelong learning? Who does it benefit and how?
The Check In-Take Out (CITO) project was created as a part of the Upskilling Pathways and has three main outputs: a mapping survey, a Skills Checker tool and a training and outreach toolkit for stakeholders.
This project aims to provide an accessible tool for employees to assess their skills and competences independently, resulting in increased awareness of problems and consequent reach for other upskilling pathways programmes that provide training (CITO, n.d.b).
Employment rates have increased since the implementation of Further Education and Training Strategies as a part of Upskilling Pathways. Sectors with the most significant challenges in terms of low qualification of workers included health and welfare, retail, accommodation and food service, construction, agriculture, transportation and storage. The sectors with the most considerable uptake according to the 2020 data are health and welfare, business administration and law, services, information and communications technology and engineering, manufacturing and construction. The number of participants has increased from 5600 to 6600 employees in just one year. Since March 2020, more than 7000 people have enrolled in online courses at the eCollege (Lyons, 2020).
References
CITO (checkin takeoff). n.d.a. What is CITO?. [Online] Floriana, CITO. Available at: https://citoproject.eu/project/ [Accessed 20 September 2021].
CITO. n.d.b. Mapping survey report. [Online] Available at: https://citoproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CITOMappingSurvey_31-8-2020.pdf s.l., CITO [Accessed 20 September 2021].
European Commission. 2016. COUNCIL RECOMMENDATION of 19 December 2016 on Upskilling Pathways: New Opportunities for Adults. [Online] Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C:2016:484:FULL&from=EN [Accessed 29 September 2021].
Lyons, M. 2020. Upskilling Pathways. [Online] s.l., SOLAS. Available at: https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/files/plf_upskilling_pathways_2020_ireland.pdf [Accessed 20 September 2021].