How can adult learning activities and career orientation services work in the same direction to support adults in their personal, educational and professional journeys, while also responding to major societal and economic needs?

Nowadays, we are experiencing a great focus on skills' development across all the areas of education and employment services, at the European level and in Member states. The general vision seems to be very oriented on supporting specific and often technical skills with dedicated funds and training programs, fully oriented to fill the current and emerging gaps of skills demand in the European labour market. While a need for a continuous process of skilling and reskilling is undeniable and certainly agreed upon by all the actors involved, as well as in the perspective of lifelong learning, an approach mostly focused on funding only or mostly functionally oriented training programs may not be effective on its own, without appropriate actions of information and guidance and focusing on citizen capacity to choose and build their own pathways. These services could be integrated within learning and training programs and not only available within employment centres, to be activated at the time that employment is lost. ALE programs could constitute an excellent context for exploration and orientation actions, to support adults to approach new concepts of work and to understand how sectors and skills have and are changing.

The potential for the ALE sector activities and their practitioners to act as the bridge to more structured formal education and specific employability-related training is enormous. However, the concrete implementation of such an integrated vision still seems timid across services and support and recognition of the value of real cross-sectoral actions within the education sector is still a quite general priority.

Adults still have limited options for effective and accessible guidance opportunities

According to the recently published evaluation report from the Commission on the Upskilling Pathways Recommendation, ‘’Career guidance by the public employment services is widely available, but suffers from low levels of awareness, may be perceived as intimidating, and is not always available to low-skilled who are not unemployed.’’ (Source: Evaluation of the Council Recommendation of 19 December 2016 on Upskilling Pathways: New Opportunities for adults – European Commission, 2023).

This suggests the existence of a clear gap in many Member States when it comes to activities supporting adults to understand and orient themselves through new opportunities in the life-long learning perspective and at any stage a change of professional path may be envisaged, for any reason and in any direction.

Furthermore, the Staff Working Document Evaluation to the same recommendation, while confirming a variety of offers and degree of effectiveness of such services across MS, also specifies that ‘’In the survey of organisations representing low-skilled adults, 53% said that awareness amongst the target group was missing or low. In the survey of adult learners, the greatest proportion of respondents said that they learned about their adult learning programme through friends (42%) and only around 10% cited national websites or a guidance provider, consistent with a limited effective outreach of organized career guidance and outreach efforts’’.

The role of Public Employment Services (PES) and of their guidance services appear to be of relevance for people out of employment, while parallel services are not always available for (low-skilled) employed people and such services for employers/employees are also still inconsistent, with a greater impact on SME and their employees rather than on larger companies. (Source: Commission Staff Working Document Evaluation of the Council Recommendation of 19 December 2016 on Upskilling Pathways: New Opportunities for adults, European Commission, 2023).

The EAEA position paper on the Recommendations, which includes feedback by EAEA network members, outlines as well that ‘’guidance measures would be in a central position to address target groups with low skills’’ and, points out how the Recommendation has shifted the focus of ALE strategies and policy toward skills (validation, basic skills) but also narrowed it down towards employability. (Source: Implementation of the Upskilling Pathways, EAEA Feedback to the Public Consultation, EAEA, February 2022).

Adults often need to (re)learn about the world of work, and not only how to work.

In many cases, adults who have been working the same job and/or have been away from learning for a long time have a need to update their knowledge of the world of work and not only improve their skills to work in a specific role and sector. They need to be capable of building their pathways according to a good understanding of their own competences and of the available opportunities, and they need to be conscious of the potential gaps based on an informed and self-determination approach.

The Eurydice report on Adult education and training in Europe from 2021 seems to confirm the lowest access to guidance services by adults with low levels of skills or qualifications, as well as that ‘’targeted guidance services that are tailored specifically to the needs of adults with low levels of basic skills or qualifications exist in only a few European countries.’’

On the other hand, the same report points out that ‘’Guidance can facilitate the process of setting learning and progression goals or finding suitable education and training options and mapping out a pathway to reach the educational and professional goals set’’, also explaining, just a bit later, that ‘’Guidance services cover a range of activities, including information giving, counselling, competence assessment, support and the teaching of decision-making and career management skills. They can be provided in schools, at job or training centres, at public employment services, in the workplace, in community centres or in other settings’’. 

(Source: Adult education and training in Europe, Building inclusive pathways to skills and qualifications, Eurydice report, European Education and Culture Executive Agency, 2021).

The role of career management skills in re-building effective and fulfilling pathways

The current landscape seems to suggest a strong need for a more strategic and integrated approach to how effective and custom guidance/orientation activities are offered and made truly available for the whole adult population, no matter their current employment status and specific short-term needs of the labour market. We would then go a step further and state that it is not only fundamental to provide more guidance and information about opportunities, being them about education or employment, but rather designing activities that can support adults in developing appropriate Career Management Skills, that is, the capacity to build their own process, in relative autonomy and confidence from self-assessment of competences to identification of potential paths and therefore concrete opportunities. 

Common definitions of Career Management Skills are in fact referring to those skills that help any person to identify their competences, identify objectives for their professional development and then make a concrete plan of action and implement it. Many initiatives have developed CMS frameworks that define more in detail the competences and their level, (for example the LEADER project, with a model organised in five areas, and the Career Skills project, with a model organised in 12 areas). Many good practices are also available in Europe on how to implement activities that support CMS development at all levels of education and for different audiences.

However, while the idea that life-long guidance and life-long learning are and should be one was developed and conceptualized more than 15 years ago (see the Resolution of the Council and of the Representatives of the Governments of the Member States, meeting within the Council of 21 November 2008 on better integrating lifelong guidance into lifelong learning strategies), implementation of this concept seems to be still scattered and not systemic.

ALE activities have a great potential to fill in the guidance services gap

In our view, adult non-formal learning activities represent a unique point of intersection between adult citizen’s needs, and their community, supporting inclusion and employability and fostering skills development. Integrating more guidance experiential and explorative activities within ALE non-formal education constitutes an opportunity to fill the current gaps in services to adults who encounter difficulties accessing more traditional or institutional services, due to their specific needs or to structural limitations of the offer. A fundamental opportunity for more and more effective career guidance activities is to consider them as learning experiences as well, also building on the non-formal training and engagement methods and leveraging the strong collaboration with other local actors in context and the embedment in the community.

ALE learning environments has also a great potential to help adults overcome some of the factors that seem still very relevant in this equation, such as low awareness and the possibility of feeling intimidated by the traditional guidance services, as we have outlined in the Upskilling Pathways evaluation results.

Related Resources on EPALE

ENTER: Supporting marginalized young adults to enter the labour market through an innovative Career Mentoring Model