Languages in a new skills agenda for Europe

[Editor’s note: The following extracts are taken from the European Commission’s Communication, A New Skills Agenda For Europe: Working Together to Strengthen Human Capital, Employability and Ccompetitiveness (Brussels, 10.6.2016 COM(2016) 381 final), available on the Europa website, https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/1-2016-381-EN-F1-1.PDF

The extracts selected are the sections that relate to skills in the areas of language and literacy]

Strengthening the foundation: basic skills

Europe faces a basic skills challenge. People need a minimum level of basic skills, including numeracy, literacy and basic digital skills, to access good jobs and participate fully in society. These are also the building blocks for further learning and career development. Around a quarter of the European adult population struggles with reading and writing, and has poor numeracy and digital skills. More than 65 million people in the EU have not achieved a qualification corresponding to upper secondary level. This rate varies significantly across EU countries, reaching 50% or more in some.

As most jobs increasingly require complex skills, low-qualified people have fewer employment opportunities available to them. They are also more vulnerable to precarious jobs and are twice as likely as better qualified people to experience long-term unemployment. Under-skilled individuals are also often vulnerable consumers, especially in increasingly complex markets.

1. 1. To improve the employment opportunities of low-skilled adults in Europe, Member States should put in place pathways for upskilling via a Skills Guarantee established in cooperation with social partners and education and training providers, as well as local, regional and national authorities. Upskilling should be open to people both in-work and out of work. Low-skilled adults should be helped to improve their literacy, numeracy and digital skills and – where possible – develop a wider set of skills leading to an upper secondary education qualification or equivalent.

The Commission proposes that a Skills Guarantee be established (see ref. doc COM(2016) 382) to provide:

• • a skills assessment, enabling low-qualified adults to identify their existing skills and their upskilling needs;

• • a learning offer, responding to the specific needs of individuals and of local labour markets;

opportunities to have their skills validated and recognized.

Building resilience: key competences and higher, more complex skills

Formal education and training should equip everyone with a broad range of skills which opens doors to personal fulfilment and development, social inclusion, active citizenship and employment. These include literacy, numeracy, science and foreign languages, as well as transversal skills and key competences such as digital competences, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, problem-solving or learning to learn and financial literacy.

Early acquisition of these skills is the foundation for the development of higher, more complex skills which are needed to drive creativity and innovation. These skills need to be strengthened throughout life, and allow people to thrive in fast-evolving workplaces and society, and to cope with complexity and uncertainty.

While some of these competences already have an established place in educational systems, this is not typically the case for key competences such as entrepreneurship and citizenship, or transversal skills. Where some Member States have taken steps to incorporate them in curricula, this has not always been done consistently. To promote a shared understanding of two of these competences, the Commission has developed reference frameworks for digital competences¹ (now taken up in 13 Member States) and entrepreneurship² – newly published.

The Commission will work further with stakeholders to develop tools for assessing and validating these competences. These tools will enable public authorities and private bodies to improve their guidance, training and mentoring services for young people, job seekers and individuals in general. The Commission will also support EU countries, regions and education and training institutions to help young people acquire the entrepreneurial competences which can help them to set up their own business or social enterprise. EU programmes such as Erasmus+, COSME and the European Social Fund already provide financial support to this end.

1. 2. To help more people acquire a core set of skills, the Commission intends to launch a revision of the Key Competences...