Context: This study is about vocational education and training for adults within municipal adult education (MAE). Sweden has a long tradition of adult education, and has one of the world's highest proportions of participants in adult education. The Swedish education system is characterised by extensive marketisation with many private actors,…

Jobs, labour markets and economies are rapidly changing: globalisation, technology and a growing services sector are both causes and symptoms. Ageing populations and dwindling youth cohorts, on the one hand, and labour migration, on the other, are affecting workforce composition. And that's not to mention the lingering impact of the financial…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

This paper, jointly prepared by Cedefop and the ETF, aims to inform the next steps in VET policy- making at EU level, including the Osnabruck declaration expected to be discussed by ministers in the autumn of 2020. It puts forward key challenges and opportunities for VET which have emerged from the intelligence, research and evidence collected…

European policy-making in vocational education and training (VET) needs to be supported by sound evidence. In this report, Cedefop has selected a set of 36 indicators to quantify some key aspects of VET and lifelong learning. The selection was based on the indicators' policy relevance and their importance in achieving the Europe 2020 objectives.…

Community colleges, which are public, two-year institutions of higher education, have become a major provider of education and training that directly leads to a job in a particular occupation. To help community colleges build capacity to provide job training, the federal government has funded several grant programs over the past 15 years. Recent…

The virtual conference on the Artificial Intelligence in education and training was held from 11 to 15 November 2019. It was open to all members of the UNESCO-UNEVOC TVeT Forum, an online community with more than 6500 members. The conference sought to gather knowledge, insights, experiences and practices from the international TVET community on…

These Key Indicators on Education, Skills and Employment (KIESE) are a collection of statistics that are part of a broader set of indicators proposed by the ETF to enable an assessment of developments in the field of human capital in the partner countries. They include data on education, initial vocational education and training, lifelong…

"Research Messages 2018" highlights the varied nature of the research activities undertaken by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) in the past year. Research published during 2018 encompasses a range of themes and topics categorised according to three broad areas: (1) structures and systems for skilling and…

This report identifies effective strategies to tackle skills imbalances, based on five country-specific policy notes for France, Italy, Spain, South Africa and the United Kingdom. It provides a comparative assessment of practices and policies in the following areas: the collection and use of information on skill needs to foster a better alignment…

The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)-UNESCO Dakar and the Francophonie Institute for Education and Training (IFEF) wanted to study how the competency-based training (CBT) was adapted, what contextualisation and adaptation of programmes according to the CBT has taken place, and what positive practices have made the CBT…

This article analyses online job advertisements to identify skills that are demanded in selected low- and medium-skilled occupations. We explore data from the publicly administered cross-European EURES job search portal and quantify the different cognitive and non-cognitive skills requested by employers in small European economies. While we find…

This short description contributes to better understanding of vocational education and training (VET) in Portugal, by providing insight into its distinctive features and highlighting system developments and current challenges. VET in Portugal offers a wide range of programmes, flexible in type and duration. Promoting equal opportunities and…

IIEP-UNESCO Dakar and the IFEF have carried out a joint study on contextualizing and adapting the competency-based approach (CBA) in seven African countries: South Africa, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, Rwanda, and Senegal. This study has identified good practices and their use for making the CBA more effective in TVET systems, as well as the…

The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)-UNESCO Dakar and the Francophonie Institute for Education and Training (IFEF) wanted to study how the competency-based training (CBT) was adapted, what contextualisation and adaptation of programmes according to the CBT has taken place, and what positive practices have made the CBT…