Context
The urgent transition to climate neutrality and environmental sustainability, rapid technological developments and demographic changes impact the labour market in many ways and require the workforce to adapt to the changing nature of jobs. Key challenges that the Union is facing include persistent skills mismatches, labour shortages and insufficient skills of the workforce for the green and digital transition, and an ageing and shrinking workforce, in particular in certain European regions.
Objectives
In the context of 2023 European Year of Skills, this flagship aims at supporting Member States ministries of education and labour to advance skills development through reforms to enable them to reach the 2030 EU headline targets of at least 60% of adults participating in training every year, and at least 78% of the working-age population being in employment.
It will enable Member States to progress towards reaching the European Education Area targets on basic skills, tertiary education and digital skills, and the 2030 Digital Compass targets of at least 80% of adults with basic digital skills and 20 million employed ICT specialists in the EU.
It will also support the implementation of the Talent Booster Mechanism by supporting EU regions to train, retain and attract the people, and the skills to address the impact of the demographic transition.
Support Measures
Member States can opt for support measures within one or several packages, depending on their needs:
- Design and implement reforms to prepare Europeans for the green and digital economies and adapt the education and training systems to the needs of the labour market;
- Improve the inclusiveness and quality of education and training systems to ensure better educational outcomes for all learners;
- Support the modernisation of tertiary education and improve its labour market relevance, with a focus on STEM;
- Develop and improve methods and tools to monitor labour and skills shortages and to better anticipate the skills and qualifications requirements of the labour market;
- Design policies to address labour and skills shortages and to harness talent in the regions.
General support measures
- Stakeholder mapping and consultations;
- Analysis and mapping of the training and education needs of the workforce;
- Design and support in the implementation of strategies, roadmaps, action plans and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms;
- Pilot testing for the implementation of strategies/action plans/tools.;
- Capacity building actions, communication and dissemination activities as well as exchange of EU good practices and study visits.
Specific support measures
- Design/update of teaching and learning curricula for teachers and trainers, as well as education programmes to foster development of future-oriented skills and competences;
- Design and implementation of skills ecosystems at national, regional or local level, including skills governance systems;
- Design and implementation of reforms to ensure better prepared workforce in specific industrial sectors, including working with artificial intelligence and cloud computing, net-zero technologies, better representation of women in certain professions, and skills for SMEs’ employees;
- Develop policy reforms, national or regional strategies to foster more relevant skills in line with the needs of the national and regional labour markets for all categories of learners, including the most disadvantaged individuals;
- Develop tools and methodologies for the recognition and validation of skills and qualifications;
- Design, implement, monitor and evaluate inclusiveness frameworks and strategies to prevent early school leaving and foster school success;
- Identification of barriers hindering the development of green and digital skills and recommendations on ways to eliminate them;
- Support to Member States and regions to increase employee retention, implement talent attraction programmes, and tools to address skills shortages.
