Siegfried's article in public service review eu issue 15

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2. T
he European Lifelong Learning
Programme (LLP) consists of
international mobility,
partnerships and innovative projects,
along with accompanying activities.
The Lisbon Strategy and the
Copenhagen process are leading the
LLP priorities for Vocational Education
and Training (VET). The following
promotes the development of a better
focus for the Leonardo da Vinci
programme on three concepts:
■ Anticipation of skills gap
■ The concept of lifelong learning, and
■ Lifelong guidance
Anticipation of skills gap
The anticipation of a skills gap suggests
what advice and labour market
intelligence employers require in order
to determine their skill requirements
effectively, and to ensure their future
competitiveness. Educational and
training institutions then need to
anticipate employers’ requirements. As
supply side institutions, they need to
anticipate employers’ skills demand. It
sounds simple, yet there are some
challenges. In the construction sector in
Western Europe, there is a clear
shortage of medium skilled workers.
What to do? Maybe, start a campaign to
attract young people to enter a career
in this sector or use the international
mobility opportunities from Poland, the
Baltic States and other countries? What
happens if the demand for workers
starts to decline? How about the skilled
workforce that is needed to build
infrastructure in the home countries, if
even the average workers work abroad
to earn more?
In healthcare, the ageing population
requires more medical assistants to care
for people after heart or brain failure. Is
education ready to prepare the new
medical assistants, are the necessary
competences identified, and how many
healthcare workers are needed?
Educational innovators in the medical
sector – actors in the LLP – face the
challenge of taking into account the
differences in equipment, conditions
and working methods across the
European countries.
Countries with a large portion of their
population, even school population,
becoming overweight, face a challenge
in medical care. If a government
decides to develop a policy to stress
healthy food habits, companies will
act on this, and education and training
need to anticipate the future skills. In
the agri-food sector, different
scenarios for the anticipation of future
skills are developed and researched by
Eurofound. If a national policy is to
stress good food habits, the whole
chain will experience the
consequences – producers, distributors,
catering and food retail companies will
turn to more eco-products, less sugar
in food, less cholesterol, and use more
local supply to save energy. Which are
the competences needed then in such
a scenario? This would be quite
different if there were no active
national policy on good food habits,
with fast food companies playing a
dominant role and the importing of
food products from other continents
booming. The challenge for the
national VET systems is to anticipate
and show responsiveness either way.
Lifelong learning
This is often understood as continuous
training in our working life long after
we’ve finished school or university.
However, it is only one dimension, say
the vertical dimension, which is more
training to try to be the best, to excel
in what we do in our profession. The
second dimension is how broad the
scope of training is. Discover our ‘other’
talents in how to communicate with
people with different languages and
cultures, understand the power of
music and arts, let mind and body work
together in sports, learn to participate
in virtual communities and social
networks in real-life, learn to love and
care for family and friends. The third
dimension is how deep lifelong learning
is. This touches processes within
ourselves to understand why and what
we are doing: What is the meaning of
all we do in our work and social life.
Discover the workings of ‘flow’ in the
feeling of success or to find peace in
life with Zen, for example, in the art of
maintenance of the motor bike. In this
way, lifelong learning encompasses the
three dimensions.
Traditionally, people are in education to
the ages 18-25, work and care for a
partner and children, and enjoy life after
retirement. The new development is that
people want to simultaneously learn,
work, care and enjoy – youngsters
having jobs before or after school hours,
30-somethings having a sabbatical year
to see the world, parents working part-
time to be there for their children one
or two days a week and learning long
after you finished school as senior
citizen, elderly worker. Further, lifelong
learning should be seen in the context
of the new age of homo zappiens.
In an age of the internet and
globalisation, young people learn
differently as homo zappiens – more
visual oriented multi-tasking, the
availability of information on the web
and the fact that knowledge is less
important than the wisdom of asking
Leonardo da Vinci
challenges
Peer learning, networks,
innovative projects,
partnerships and
international mobility…
EU15PROFILE
186

3. 187
the right questions. Are teachers and
trainers able to keep up with youngsters
who are able to constantly stay in
contact with each other through SMS,
Windows Live Messenger, YouTube, who
create their own video clips to use in
power point presentations supported by
the newest top hit sound? They do not
know the details of national, European
or world history, they rely on their
resources for this information should it
be needed. For this reason, the formal
education and training system seems to
be losing its dominant role in learning,
but companies are anticipating this by
creating e-learning devices where
educational entertainment and serious
gaming are no longer seen as childish.
Technicians are already facing m-
learning, where they receive on the spot
instructions as customers explain their
problem. Through their mobile
smartphones connected to multiple
web-based knowledge databases, they
diagnose equipment problems and solve
them on the spot. They arrive at the
‘crime scene’ knowing to expect
anything and are prepared to learn to
solve problems there and then.
Responsiveness that no college can
match, only problem oriented learning
solutions can help here. The challenge
for the Leonardo da Vinci Programme is
to adapt the VET system in Europe to
this new concept of lifelong learning.
Lifelong guidance
If lifelong learning is seen in this
multifaceted perspective, then there is a
challenge for lifelong guidance.
Guidance is not just about helping in
the making choices for the next step in
educational or job career. Guidance may
also be needed to help anticipate skills
gaps, ie. are there jobs or professions to
match talents? Guidance services often
lack this information. Nowadays, public
employment services are showing more
interest in results from sectoral scans,
ie. what does the sector need? In which
professions are there shortages? Yet the
result of the work of public employment
services is often measured by the
number of placements for job seekers
not on a lifelong career. Then there is
the new homo zapiens, who not only
zapp the internet for information but
also for zapping jobs and zapping
guidance service providers, like
psychologist, coaches, and tests to help
them understand what their talents are,
what they like and who they want to
be. But, is the information provided
reliable? Is there any quality control on
guidance practitioners from public and
private services?
Making the wrong choice in the lifelong
careers of citizens costs society a lot of
money. The challenge is to extend the
guidance system from curative guidance
towards preventive guidance and to
invest more in key competences where
everyone is prepared to take up the
challenge to take their life in their own
hands, to be able to choose whole life
learning, working, care and fun.
National Agencies (NA) in the Lifelong
Learning Programme are often seen as
just the ones that deal with the money,
but the NA LLPs should be proactive in
seeing in which way we can help create
projects with themes that address the
right topics. Together with the relevant
DG’s education, employment, enterprise,
and European and national stakeholders
a bridge could be built between policies
telling us what Europe needs and how
LLP projects in VET can support these.
Globalisation requires the educational
system to adapt. A policy for
internationalisation is needed on a
national level – for example,
international competences embedded in
a national qualification framework – and
on school level – for example, a policy
for preparing students for jobs, where
they will have to face international
contacts in business-to-consumer and
business-to-business relations. This is
possible even without international
mobility, ie. virtual mobility.
Real-life experience still makes a
difference. If every student could
experience international mobility, it
would be perfect. The challenge for
international mobility is, of course, the
available funds. Facts show that in the
LLP available funds could never
facilitate more than 1% of the student
population in Europe. The LLP, therefore,
is only a tool to stimulate schools to
understand the value of international
mobility and to help them to make the
curriculum as international as is needed.
The challenge for the LLP is to help
schools starting up international
mobility and to raise awareness of
schools, national authorities and other
stakeholders of making international
mobility a regular part of a school’s
curriculum. International mobility for
trainers, teachers, and the professionals
is required if a policy for
internationalisation is to be developed.
Staff mobility is already well on its way,
but the biggest challenge is
international mobility for people in the
labour market.
The best example of lifelong learning is
when a worker who has been working
at the company for years and is starting
to become a bit uninspired, afraid of
new, especially international
developments, returns from an
international mobility experience. The
new energy, the real-life experience of
working within a foreign company for a
time can rejuvenate a person entirely.
Lifelong guidance, anticipation of skills
needs, and the full three dimensions
concept could have a strong joint focus
point here. The challenge is to extend
the LLP horizon beyond the educational
system into the world of work and
business. And, at the same time,
promote lifelong learning as a lesson in
caring for people and the planet, to
have a good relation in work and within
social network, to enjoy life and make
life meaningful to oneself and to others.
The Triple P concept could give
inspiration for the lifelong learning
concept thinking. Profit: what is your
economic added value? Planet: how do
you face an inconvenient truth? People:
what did you do to make the difference
and become part of the world heritage?
The ultimate challenge: sustainable
lifelong learning.
Peer learning, networks, innovative
projects, partnerships and international
mobility – what are we waiting for?
Let’s get started.
EU15PROFILE
Drs. Siegfried Willems
NA LLP Head of the Leonardo da
Vinci programme
CINOP
PO Box 1585
5200 BP’s-Hertogenbosch
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 73 6800 762
Fax: +31 73 6123 425
willems@leonardodavinci.nl
www.leonardodavinci.nl