"Learning does not stop when you finish school or university. We live in a rapidly changing world in the Information Age, and our workforce must make sure it has the general skills required by our demanding globalised environment. Also, as our society ages, it is more important than ever before that adults continue to learn new skills or refresh old knowledge throughout their lives."
Jan Figel
European Commissioner for Education and Culture
Madeleine Gunny and Evelyn Viertel
Working title: DESIGNING COHERENT ADULT LEARNING POLICIES
Foreword
This publication came about thanks to a genuine team effort. The editors are grateful to the many experts inside and outside the European Training Foundation who have provided valuable contributions. In this context, special thanks are due to:
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· Zaklina Gestakovska from Macedonia and Robert Teunissen from the ETF for providing inputs to the chapter on “Promoting HRD in companies and assisting small companies”.
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1. Introduction
Over the past decade the countries of South East Europe have faced and continue to face unprecedented changes in the political, economic and social spheres. Transition has had a major impact on the skills enterprises need to maintain and improve competitiveness and the growing numbers of small and micro businesses need a range of skills to survive in difficult market conditions. With privatisation, former state or socially owned industries in Southeast European countries have closed or restructured, or are in the process of doing so, which has led to high unemployment, and in particular long-term, structural unemployment. Despite efforts to strengthen their economies, economic growth is slow and job growth minimal. There is substantial social exclusion, and poverty has reached critical levels. Moreover, there is a growing social and economic gap between people with relevant skills for the market and those with obsolete or low skills.
Major sectoral restructuring and diversification, changing shares of employment in agriculture, manufacturing and the service sector coupled with changes in job content have increased the demand for different occupational skills. Set against these changes is the evolving impact of the global knowledge economy and pressure to raise the quality and level of skills across the board. The spread of higher technology and information communication technologies is not skills neutral and increases pressure on workers to upgrade their technological competence and acquire ICT skills to remain in employable. Other key competences, such as communication in the mother tongue and foreign languages, mathematical, scientific and technical literacy, learning-to-learn skills, interpersonal competences, entrepreneurship skills and the ability to innovate are increasingly important for employment and self-employment. Despite these general trends, the actual demand for skills in local labour markets may not yet reflect such skill shifts as transition is ongoing and economic growth may not have materialised. In closed labour markets characterised by low technology, the demand for skilled labour is low and enterprises have, as a rule, no difficulty recruiting labour. Closed labour markets cannot absorb large numbers of highly skilled labour, especially young people without work experience, many of whom migrate to find employment abroad. Whilst migration provides people with employment and opportunities to obtain experience and skills, the downside is that it also reduces the supply of skills when economies begin to grow rapidly.
The challenge for transition economies is to address skill mismatches and skill shortages, which takes time and is compounded by the pace of economic, technological and social change and by the scale of skill deficits. Enterprises under most pressure need to adopt appropriate short-term and long-term appropriate human resources development measures so that they are able to respond effectively to immediate and specific business situations. They need to be forward looking to anticipate future skill needs so that they have a workforce with the right mix of skills and competences at the right time to respond to new business demands. In practice, this means adopting a range of measures and a systematic process for human resources planning that is linked to business development and takes account of the external and internal business environment.
Southeast European countries and territories that emerged from the break-up of the former Republic of Yugoslavia have also had to come to terms with the after-math of a war, that left communities as well as economies in disarray. Community divisions and ethnic tensions have to be addressed alongside economic restructuring. This, in turn, requires people with skills of advocacy and reconciliation and the ability to bring different communities together.
Responsibility for developing skills and competences is a shared one between enterprises, government and individuals. Governments and employers have a shared interest in economic growth, wealth creation and social progress. These will be hard to realise without an adequately trained and technological progress, new production methods, organisational change and a workforce which is flexible, able to adapt and to innovate with new products and services. Individuals, too, need to take responsibility for developing their skills for career progression and to ensure their employability in a constantly changing labour market. Continuous investment in skills throughout life is much more important today and requires the injection of substantial new financial resources from enterprises, individuals and governments.
Many institutions, enterprises and individuals are ill-prepared for the complexity and depth of the changes which are fundamentally transforming working and social life today. To respond effectively to permanent change, OECD countries and European Union member states have given much more importance to making lifelong learning a reality. Lifelong learning emerged as a key policy issue towards the end of the 1990s as a strategic response to globalisation, the knowledge economy, continual market and technological change, growing unemployment and rising social exclusion.
Lifelong learning is a continuum that extends from early childhood education, through initial education and working life into retirement. Learning takes place anywhere, in kindergartens, schools and other institutions, at work, in the community or at home. Governments and their partners are asked to put policies and institutional arrangements in place that ensure lifelong access to opportunities for acquiring the knowledge and competences essential for economic development, social and civic progress and personal development.
This publication focuses on the adult phase of lifelong learning – an area that has tended to be neglected in education reforms in the countries and territories of South East Europe so far. It draws on analyses and findings from a project carried out by the European Training Foundation in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and the fYR Macedonia in the period between 2003 and 2005. Local teams of experts were assisted in the assessment of current adult learning policies and practices and in the design of adult learning strategies and action plans. Adult learning covers all learning undertaken by adults for whatever purpose. It is wider than learning related to employment, professional development and social inclusion and includes learning for personal development and interest. Notwithstanding the intrinsic value of all learning, we, the authors, would argue that the first priorities for governments in the context of transition and scarce financial resources, are to concentrate on skills that stimulate competitiveness, employment and economic growth, empower people to remain employable and to move from poverty and social exclusion to work. Hence, in this publication the focus is on learning related to employment, which is underpinned by the European employment objectives. Adult learning takes into account formal learning in institutions, non-formal but structured learning acquired for example at work, as well as random or informal learning.
Following an analysis of the socio-economic trends and their impact on skills and adult learning systems in the countries, we elaborate on the policy areas listed below that we believe are important to boost adult learning and ultimately contribute to raising the overall skill levels of the population:
· raising awareness of the importance of lifelong learning and creating a learning culture;
· promoting HRD in companies and promoting the continuing development of key competences among the adult population;
· developing an effective adult learning system responsive to the diverse learning needs of adults including young people;
· customising learning offers and methodologies and furthering the professional development of adult trainers;
· ensuring quality in adult learning;
· developing qualification frameworks and processes to assess and certify skills acquired through prior formal, non-formal or informal learning and experience;
· developing further lifelong information, guidance and counselling systems;
· providing specific support to groups of companies and individuals under-represented in learning; and
· promoting intelligence, research and continuous development of adult learning;
· systematic monitoring and evaluation of progress.
There have been many developments in Southeast European countries in the past few years, which were initiated primarily by donors. Substantial donor funding and technical assistance have, for instance, gone into active labour market measures, the reform of vocational curricula and schools, retraining programmes, specific training programmes for disadvantaged groups and for small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as retraining as part of wider local economic regeneration projects. However, these initiatives have for the most part taken place in a policy vacuum. They have very often been ad hoc and were not followed up when donor projects expired.
The strategies drawn up in the frame of the European Training Foundation project testifies to the fact that the countries in South East Europe are now giving a higher policy priority to adult learning, although the full impact of policy change has yet to be realised. With this publication, we hope to contribute to related national debates. Our analyses show that, for the most part, the former private and public adult learning infrastructure declined over the last decade and in some cases collapsed altogether. There is, thus, a need for a coherent adult learning policy framework that connects up the different strands and actors of adult learning as part of lifelong learning. Higher investment in the skills and knowledge of people will ultimately support business competitiveness and growth and ensure people remain competitive in the open labour market. It is also important to tackle social exclusion by ensuring that those who are economically and socially disadvantaged and exposed to long-term unemployment have equal access to continuing training to increase their employability.
2. ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN CHALLENGES OF ADULT LEARNING FOR COUNTRIES IN SOUTH EAST EUROPE
2.1. The need for a broader concept of skills and competences
One of the key challenges of lifelong learning is to enable young people and adults to develop skills or competences that are relevant and appropriate for working and social life. However, the concept of skills has changed substantially and covers a broad range of specific and generic skills that are needed in the workplace today. Payne (2004) provides a useful summary: Traditionally, he argues, ‘skills’ referred to ‘hard’ technical abilities and know-how needed by manufacturing workers and technicians or the analytical capacities of scientists. The concept has since broadened to include ‘soft’, ‘core’, ‘generic’, ‘key’ or ‘transferable’ skills that are important for success in the labour market. These have wide application across different employment situations. There are the new ‘basic skills’ which are not the same as basic foundation or life skills, such as literacy and arithmetic ability. These ‘soft’ skills include communication skills, process skills, ICT, team working, problem solving skills, learning how to learn and being responsible for improving ones own learning and performance. Payne suggests that these important generic skills, with the exception of the more measurable or ‘hard’ skills, such as IT and modern languages, may be downplayed in reforms to vocational qualifications and curricula precisely because they are not open to measurement and are acquired in many different and subtle ways.
Employers also ask for certain personal qualities and values, attitudes and attributes in their workforce which have been incorporated into the notion of ‘skill’. These include leadership skills, positive attitudes towards change, integrity and motivation. Creativity is important, too, because it helps enterprises to respond to market change and to innovate. In the service sector, in particular, employers also look for good interpersonal and customer handling skills. This means that the workforce needs to have good ‘emotional’ or ‘people’ skills in order to manage their own feelings and those of their customers. These kinds of skills are acquired through interaction with others.
At European level, basic skills emerged as a key element in lifelong learning in 2000 when the Lisbon European Council called on Member States, the Council and the European Commission to establish a European framework for ‘new basic skills’. An EU working group on key competences found that the key competences are those that are ‘needed for personal fulfilment, active citizenship and social inclusion and employment in the knowledge society’.
The term ‘competence’ refers to “the ability to meet complex demands” and to “a combination of interrelated knowledge, cognitive skills, attitudes, values, motivation and emotions”. Competence is “action-based and context-oriented” (Rychen, 2006), which means that it depends on specific situations or circumstances. ‘Key competences’ are ‘important for all individuals” rather than specific competencies used only in particular occupations or walks of life. They are “transversal” and require a “critical stance and a reflective practice that goes well beyond the accumulation of knowledge and facts and basic skills” (ibid).
Key competences include specific skills to carry out a certain task, as well as ‘more flexible, generic and transferable competences’. The EU reference framework describes eight key competences: communication in a person’s mother tongue, communication in a foreign language, mathematical literacy and basic competences in science and technology, digital competence, learning to learn, interpersonal and civic competences, sense of innovation and entrepreneurship, and cultural expression (European Commission, 2005).
2.2. Higher level technical and basic skills
To adapt and maintain competitiveness in response to technological change and higher consumer requirements, enterprises need appropriate organisational structures, a skilled workforce and able management. These changes not only impact on the structure of employment and the types of skills enterprises need, but also increase demand for a more highly skilled and educated workforce for the global knowledge economy (cf. OECD, 2001). In particular, a need for modern management frameworks calls for higher skilled and professional managers. The greater use of information and communication technologies across a broad range of occupations also requires higher levels of literacy skills and new skills, such as the ability to access and absorb a mass of information. The latter has then to be sifted for relevance and fit with the tasks in hand. In the global knowledge economy, a relevant upper secondary level qualification is now considered to be the minimum qualification level for entering the labour market and staying employable in the majority of the professions.