Commission report highlights need to upgrade skills in Europe

The European Commission engaged the services of an expert group to prepare a report on skills and training. The report, entitled ‘New skills for new jobs: Action now’, emphasises the need to provide the right incentives for people to upgrade their skills and argues for a greater alignment between education and training and the needs of the labour market. The issue of skills acquisition was also discussed at a high-level conference in Brussels on 4 February 2010.

Skills conference

The expert report, New skills for new jobs: Action now – which was prepared for the European Commission – was presented at a high-level conference in Brussels on 4 February 2010. The conference was opened by the then Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Vladimír Špidla, and the Director General for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Odile Quintin, who welcomed the report and emphasised the need to work together to make skills development a reality. Both the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the employer organisation BusinessEurope were represented at the conference.

Europeans need to be able to access education and training throughout their working lives and, in this regard, the conference took account of the European framework for key competences for lifelong learning, adopted in 2006. This framework identifies and defines eight key competences necessary for personal fulfilment, active citizenship, social inclusion and employability in a knowledge society, as follows:

1. communication in the mother tongue;

2. communication in foreign languages;

3. mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology;

4. digital competence;

5. learning to learn;

6. social and civic competences;

7. sense of initiative and entrepreneurship;

8. cultural awareness and expression.

Report highlights lack of skills in Europe

The report is the work of 10 independent experts from the fields of education and training, skills and employment, who also received contributions from the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). The report notes that, despite progress in recent years, much of Europe is not sufficiently skilled, that nearly a third of Europe’s population have no or low formal qualifications and that only a quarter have high-level qualifications.

Priority areas of action

To achieve the aim of a Europe where citizens have more and better skills, the report calls for four priority areas of action:

• a substantial investment in skills, with incentives for individuals and employers to upgrade to the right skills and to better use existing skills;

• bringing the worlds of education and training closer together. This requires more flexible and open education and training aiming to develop more effective relationships between providers, employers and job guidance services;

• developing the right mix of skills. This requires the development of transversal competences, especially digital and entrepreneurial competences, to encourage initiative;

• better anticipating future skills needs, through improved labour market information.

Changing labour market

The expert report argues that Member States that best educate and train for the future are more likely to succeed in their exit strategies from the current economic crisis; it also explains that most of the jobs in 2020 do not exist today and cannot yet be envisaged. The report emphasises a particular role for employers in its support for the concept of a ‘skills ecosystem’ in which individuals, employers and the broader economic and social context are in permanent dynamic interaction. It also points to recent research from the Bertelsmann Foundation, entitled The economic costs of inadequate education, which shows that reforming the education system, by providing adequate skills, could increase gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 10% in the long term.

Cedefop’s latest forecast, set out in a briefing note presented to the European Commission conference on 4 February 2010, anticipates a steady rise in knowledge-intensive and skills-intensive occupations. There is also a clear view that education and skills acquisition needs to be more targeted at the needs of the workplace; moreover, it should take account of equality principles to ensure that the skills of female workers are utilised. This need is underlined by evidence presented in the expert report showing that economic sectors or occupations that traditionally focus on one gender are more likely to face skills shortages. Thus, breaking down occupational segregation and opening up more jobs in the labour market to women is one way of overcoming some skills shortages.

Dangers of ignoring skills deficit

The experts predict that, if these changes are not introduced, the global race for talent will see Europe continuing to lose part of its highly skilled workforce to Australia, Canada and the US. This problem – combined with the demographics of an ageing population – means that it is essential to address skills issues.

Sonia McKay, Working Lives Research Institute