The 7th
Lifelong Learning Week (LLL Week) took place in parallel and in collaboration
with the 2nd European Vocational Skills Week (VET Week), 20-24th
November 2017. This year the topic of the week was the topic of the year for
Lifelong Learning Platform, EPA is an active member of: Education in a Digital
World. Three subtopics were covered by the events as well as this year’s LLL
Award: democracy, inclusion and innovative pedagogies. Thanks to the generous offer
of the European Commission to host one representative of all EPA members on the
occasion of the VET Week, the events could be held in the presence of the 5 EPA
members that accepted the invitation.
The first
event of the LLL Week was exploring the implications of the Social Pillar on
education. Speakers from the European Student Union, the European Trade Union
Confederation, Solidar and OBESSU were all highlighting the importance of the
Social Pillar and underlined that the Gothenburg Summit just a few days before
the event was a historical moment for officially making an EU commitment on it.
However the speakers raised several issues around this commitment. There was an
agreement among speakers that civil society has an important role in ensuring
the Pillar serves people and we must closely follow developments of the
detailed regulations related to the Pillar. The event had surprisingly few
participants showing that the education community is yet to recognise the
importance of this new EU commitment in their field.
Another
highlight of the week was the meeting of the Erasmus+ Coalition in the presence
of MEPs, the European Commission, the representative of the Estonian Presidency
of the EU, national agencies and civil society. From EPA’s perspective it was
important to see that while the European Commission is implementing a success
communication strategy, the MEPs working on reporting on the current Erasmus+
programme and the preparations of the successor programme to be implemented
from 2021 fully understand and endorse all
issues raised by you, parents during the summer of 2017 when we conducted our
Erasmus+ survey. There is an agreement that there is a need to fully rethink mobility
granting that the European Commission and youth organisations are pushing for to
make them available for everybody instead of the privileged few and relatively rich
of today. There is a need to make Erasmus+ one programme, not 30+ of today,
national agencies must follow one path in the future. There has been a lot of
discussion around the need to simplify the programme and the absolute necessity
to introduce a uniform procedure in all countries.
This LLL
Week re-visited the topic of recognition and validation of non-formal learning.
In line with the topic of the LLL Week, there was a presentation of online skills
evaluation and recognition tools, mostly presented by youth organisations. The approach
is important for low skilled adults to be able to (re-)enter the labour market,
and in this respect EPA will continue to work on the validation and recognition
of diverse skills acquired during parenting.
You will
find a detailed report of the LLL Week on the LLL-P website soon.
Eszter Salamon
President
EPA
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