In the framework of European countries' cooperation on VET and lifelong learning, Cedefop monitors, analyses and reports on countries' priorities and activities. Cedefop's role in the process is pivotal: it gathers the necessary national information through its network of expertise spanning all EU Member States, Iceland and Norway, ReferNet, and…

The EU represents a transforming educational space, where national and supranational boundaries in educational governance are becoming blurred. The EU has become an important actor in educational governance and an important arena for policy learning and transfer. This paper explores how the process of reshaping the educational space manifests…

This report is the second volume of Cedefop research on empowering adults through upskilling and reskilling pathways. It presents the Cedefop analytical framework for developing upskilling pathways for low-skilled adults and illustrates its conceptual development. The analytical framework is aimed at supporting policymakers and stakeholders in…

This European Training Foundation (ETF) assessment provides an external, forward-looking analysis of Azerbaijan's human capital development issues and Vocational Education and Training (VET) policy responses in a lifelong learning perspective. It identifies challenges related to education and training policy and practice that hinder the…

This article examines the relationship between European language policy and funded language learning projects in the field of LSP. We look at why and how the objectives were expressed, how the overall directions have evolved over the past decade, and how the LSP landscape has been redefined through research and implementation. Our discursive and…

This report provides an overview of key policy developments in education, training, and employment in Belarus. The paper contains sections that review the country's key demographic and economic characteristics; education and training trends, challenges, policy and institutional setting; and labour market and employment trends, challenges, policy…

As rapid change threatens to outpace the skills of an ageing workforce and Europe developed towards a knowledge based society, the European Union, other European countries and the social partners have worked together to establish a policy framework for modernising education and training. In vocational education and training (VET), the EU has…

Cyprus takes over the European Union Presidency in the second half of 2012 in a period of continuing uncertainty due to the world economic crisis. The vocational education and training (VET) system of Cyprus is playing a significant role in dealing with the immediate adverse effects of the crisis on the labour market as well as in laying the…

In recent years, several EU initiatives have been launched with the aim of supporting the development of citizens' skills as well as improving education and training systems so that they are better able to respond to the needs of the economy and society. This document summarises the information received from 25 Eurydice National Units…

This article seeks to describe briefly various initiatives taken to ease recognition and comparison of formal qualifications across borders in the EU. It takes a political angle, from binding legal instruments such as directives and decisions to policy instruments such as recommendations and voluntary action and covers 27 Member States with very…

This guide, which builds on the Further Education Development Agency's environmental, regional, and economic development initiatives, is intended to help further education (FE) colleges throughout the United Kingdom respond to the sustainable development challenges posed by the International Organization for Standardization's quality environmental…

A 2-day conference on vocational training as an instrument to combat unemployment was held to discuss employment policy, vocational training, and decentralization in the context of the European Union's (EU's) accession strategy, current employment initiatives, and experiences of the EU's member states and regions. The conference included papers on…

This report describes policy cooperation in the Education and Training Area in the European Union (EU) in response to the Lisbon strategy and provides a comprehensive plan to respond to the challenges of the knowledge society, globalization, and the enlargement of the EU. It focuses on these three objectives: (1) improving the quality and…

Trends in vocational education and training (VET) within the European Union (EU) are examined from three viewpoints (education, geography, and industrial sociology) to determine whether policies have fostered the desired convergence of economies. Factors considered include pressures motivating VET reform, changes in national VET policies, and…

This document reports on phase 1 of the Special Preparatory Programme for the European Social Fund (SPP-ESF), which was undertaken to gather information on the transfer and exchange of experiences from the European Union (EU) to the 10 accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The 2 chapters constituting the first 15% of the report…