Lifelong Learning and Securing Career Paths: Proceedings of EU Presidency Conference Nov 2008 > ICCDPP

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Lifelong Learning and Securing Career Paths: Proceedings of EU Presidency Conference Nov 2008
By iccdppadm @ 5:40 AM :: 3543 Views :: 2 Comments ::

:: Career Development, Guidance for Unemployed Adults, Guidance for Employed Adults, Guidance for Older Adults, Guidance for Disadvantaged Groups, Co-ordination and Leadership, European Commission (EC), EU, Expanding Access to Guidance

This publication is a summary of the proceedings of a French Presidency of the EU conference supported by the European Commission's Directorates for Education and for Employment. The conference aimed to identify the challenges, to set out common findings, and to outline measures taken to make lifelong learning more effective. Lifelong learning was seen as at the heart of the flexicurity principle.

As you will see from the proceedings, most of the time was devoted to issues concerning initial and continuing vocational training: access by SMEs, by older, disabled, migrant, unskilled; employer or employee led; partnerships, motivation; costs and benefits.

The importance of career guidance and counselling was underlined by Heléne Clark, director of the EC's DG for Education, and was also underlined in the French Secretary of State for Employment's discourse on training system reform.

Comments & Ratings

By iccdppadm @ Tuesday, June 30, 2009 6:13 AM

I have some concerns about the proceedings of this conference. Its main focus was on initial and continuing training and said nothing about national lifelong learning strategies and their links to flexicurity policies. The DG for Education at the European Commission highlighted the importance of career guidance to support all kinds of lifelong learning but such sentiments never came from the employment side, neither the DG for Employment nor the social partner representatives, nor the economists and statisticians, nor from CEDEFOP. The French Secretary of State for Employment was the only person on the employment side to acknowledge the importance of lifelong guidance. Sometimes there appears to be a real lack of joined up thinking on the employment and social partner side: they are happy to spout lifelong learning as a panacea for all and as a slogan without addressing the kinds of support such as lifelong guidance provision that such a strategy requires.

By Stefan Grajcar @ Thursday, July 09, 2009 2:38 AM

Something similar I have in mind for quite a long time and I have expessed it several times where and when it was possible: my basic idea (of course, not only mine) is that I would be quite happy if the third EU resolution on lifelong guidance, whenever it wil come and which EU country presidency will bring it, would be (finally!) a result of joint efforts both DG Education & Culture and DG Employment, Social Affairs & Equal Opportunities. Nothing less, nothing more. Only then we can expect that such a resolution will be not only accepted by both sectors also on national levels, but will result also in corresponding activities, adequately balanced on both sides. At the moment it seems, and this is perhaps not only in my country, that previous resolutions were and are unfortunatelly nearly neglected by labour/employment ministries as well as by national PES.

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