Overview of Cedefop main activities on adult training: events, news, publications

Adult learning covers the entire spectrum of what we learn after leaving initial education and training. This includes work- and career-oriented learning –obtaining new qualifications, up-skilling or re-skilling for employment – but also learning for personal development and active citizenship. Ensuring that Europe’s citizens keep developing their knowledge, skills and competence throughout their lives is vital for employment, competitiveness and innovation, especially considering demographic change and the challenges of globalisation. For these reasons, European education and training policy increasingly focuses on adult learning. A major concern is tackling unemployment and raising the rate of adult participation in learning, particularly of low-qualified adults and older citizens. Vocational education and training (VET) in a broad sense, incl. formal, non-formal and informal learning – in particular learning at the workplace – is a fundamental contribution to lifelong and lifewide learning of adults. Cedefop supports the development of a European adult learning policy by following up the renewed European agenda for adult learning. With a focus on VET, Cedefop monitors and reviews policy developments that affect adult learning and makes recommendations. Its analyses contribute to evidence-based policy making and to the Europe-wide debate among policy-makers, practitioners and researchers on how to improve adult learning.