Adult Learning: Improving Career Guidance to support Adults’ Participation in Training

Themes and Priorities

• The European Year of Skills has spread the message that lifelong skills development should become the norm for everybody, namely to respond to labour and skills shortages, which put at risk the European economy and the European social model. Three quarters (78%) of small and medium-sized businesses said in a recent Eurobarometer survey that they find it difficult to recruit the talent they need.40 At the same time, 21% of people aged 20-64 in the EU are currently inactive and require targeted assistance to enter the labour market.
• Participation of adults in learning remains too limited. The 2022 Adult Education Survey found that 39.5% of adults participated in training in the previous 12 months, only 2 percentage points better than in 2016 and very far from the target that at least 60% of all adults should be participating in training every year by 2030.
• A key success factor to ensure that adults are able to engage in up- and reskilling is that they have access to guidance and counselling enabling them to make informed choices about up- and reskilling opportunities. This is especially important for persons without a functional level of basic skills who risk getting stuck in a “low skills-poor jobs trap”. Access to career guidance is also very important for people working for small and micro-enterprises who have less opportunities to participate in training. At the same time, career guidance and counselling are not only an asset for workers. They also are of the utmost importance to help companies struggling with labour shortages and to face the triple transition in Europe.
• Projects under this Topic will identify and test methods and mechanisms to improve guidance and counselling services to adults, with a particular focus on reaching out to and supporting workers in small and micro-enterprises. Projects can address up- and reskilling for all levels of staff, including workers with low basic skills, but also management. Ideally, projects should devise approaches that have the potential of becoming mainstreamed.

Funding Information

• Topic Budget: EUR 8 000 000.

Eligible Activities

• Main activities under this Topic could involve (non-exhaustive list):
  • Provision of coordinated services (whether in person or online) open to all adults and organisations (in particular SMEs and micro-enterprises) through ‘one-stopshops’, offering skills assessment, directing individuals (and groups of individuals) to tailor-made learning options, with validation of the acquired skills;
  • Improvement of the career management skills of individuals, which will help them to navigate smoothly through different learning and work opportunities, i.e. to help people learn the necessary knowledge in order to make them more autonomous in their career choices and better adapt to some of the changes in the labour market during their working lives;
  • Support to employers, especially small and micro-enterprises, to identify which skills their enterprises will need and how they can support their employees to assess and acquire these skills;
  • Reinforcement of career guidance counsellors’ training and skills development so that they can support individuals to unlock their full potential;
  • Making use of skills intelligence and digital tools, including artificial intelligence, in career guidance to capitalise on new efficiencies and scale;
  • Testing of such tools in combination with in-person guidance and counselling methods, on a sample of users.

Outcomes

• Higher participation rate of adults in lifelong learning;
• Strategies on ways to improve career guidance and counselling to support adults to make informed choices about up- and reskilling opportunities and to improve their career management skills;
• Action plans for career guidance and counselling solutions;
• Models for enhanced career guidance, counselling and mentoring for the up- and reskilling of adults, especially for people without a functional level of basic skills and for workers in small and micro-enterprises;
• Improved reflections on the specific up- and reskilling needs of SMEs and microenterprises;
• Availability of tried and tested tools that can be upscaled, to link automatised and in-person career guidance services.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  • be legal entities (public or private bodies) active in the fields of education and training, research and innovation or in the world of work. For Topic 4 ‘Adult Learning: Support to the Pact for Skills’, these bodies should also be registered members of the Pact for skills;
  • be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
    • Erasmus+ Programme Countries:
      • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
      • non-EU countries:
        • listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Erasmus+ Programme
  • for higher education institutions (HEIs) established in Erasmus+ Programme Countries (see above): be holders of the ECHE certificate (Erasmus Charter for Higher Education).

For more information, visit European Commission.