This is an independent report prepared by the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN), a Member State network in receipt of EU financial support under the Lifelong Learning Programme. The kit is designed to help policy-makers and other stakeholders to review existing lifelong guidance provision within their country or region, and to identify issues requiring attention and gaps that need to be filled, drawing from practices in other European countries.

UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning Effective Literacy Practices Database Experience is an open database of effective literacy practices across the world. In order to encourage all key actors to share their experiences and gain inspiration from innovative approaches in the field of literacy, this website provides a selection of effective adult literacy and numeracy programmes from all regions of the world.

Policy brief from European Expert Network on Economics of Education (EENEE) on how workers' skills are crucial for success on modern labour markets. The brief examines evidence from the new Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) that suggests that skills are highly valued in modern economies. On average, going up one (out of five) PIAAC proficiency levels is associated with an 18 percent wage increase. But the labor-market returns to skills differ widely across European countries, from 12 to 24 percent.

Policy brief from European Expert Network on Economics of Education (EENEE) on the need to activate universities as engines of growth in Europe. The brief examines questions like are European universities able to match societies’ expectations as engines of innovative growth without jeopardizing their main missions of education and basic research?

Policy brief from European Expert Network on Economics of Education (EENEE) on the need to have great teachers to create lasting value in education. The brief reflects on a large body of research that indicates that one way for a country to improve on its educational performance is to attract and retain excellent teachers.

Alan Tuckett's view on adult access to education and training in the context of a lifelong learning target post 2015.

The European area of skills and qualifications report presents the results of a survey on the views of stakeholders on the problems faced by learners and workers with regard to the transparency and recognition of their skills and qualifications when moving within and between EU Member States, on the adequacy of the related European policies and instruments, and on the potential benefits of developing a “European Area of Skills and Qualifications”.

The Education and Training Monitor is an instrument to foster and encourage evidence-based policy making. It is an annual report that illustrates, in a succinct document, the evolution of education and training systems across Europe. It takes into account a variety of benchmarks and indicators, as well as recent studies and policy developments.

The country reports are divided into two sections. The section Policy and Politics gives an overview of the key policy currently in force, and also outlines the main legislation or political situation in the country. Structure and Providers gives a more detailed look at the organizational structures, and also outlines the main adult education providers, mainly looking at non-formal and informal learning.

The importance of a highly skilled workforce has become increasingly relevant in the context of the European Union new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - Europe 2020. At the individual level, a good education is increasingly decisive for employment prospects and earnings levels. Hence, education and training systems must generate new skills, to respond to the nature of the new jobs, which are expected to be created, as well as to improve the adaptability and employability of adults already in the labour force. This publication attempts to address these issues.

This report studies the potential of these new online activities for lifelong learning as part of a larger project launched by Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) with DG Education and Culture. The overall project studies what contributes to the emergence and success of learning in ICT enabled communities, and how these communities could promote quality and innovation in lifelong learning and education systems in Europe.

In 2008, as part of their policy support activities, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies and DG Education and Culture launched a study to explore the innovative social and pedagogical approaches to learning that are emerging in new ICT-enabled collaborative settings. This report is the final report of the project. It synthesises the overall research results, discusses their implications and makes suggestions for the various stakeholders in education and training.

The report analyses how the competence learning to learn has been defined. It highlights different understandings which have been developed from within the socialcultural and cognitive psychological paradigms. It investigates the European definition of learning to learn and how it broadly transverses these epistemological positions. The report also establishes what learning is not by visiting concepts such as intelligence, problem-solving and learning strategies.

The report argues that ICT have an important role to play in developing learning opportunities for older people in an ageing society. It points to both opportunities (e.g. more individualized learning) and obstacles (e.g. not user-friendly ICT) as well as to the need to involve all actors in the development of ICT-enabled learning tools. It concludes that holistic policies are needed to support learning opportunities in ageing societies, enabled by ICT.

Adult learning and open education have become key elements on the European Agenda. This paper presents the first results of a foresight activity that aims to contribute to an understanding of how 'Opening up Education' can improve adult learning in Europe in the future.

The Opening up Education initiative also highlights the importance of better knowledge and stronger evidence-based policies for teaching and learning to ensure that all benefit from new technologies and Open Educational Resources. This report presents an overview and analysis of Open Educational Practices for Adult Learning in Europe.

The importance of a highly skilled workforce has become increasingly relevant in the context of the European Union new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - Europe 2020. At the individual level, a good education is increasingly decisive for employment prospects and earnings levels. The skills and competences of the workforce are the product of a large variety of learning activities that take place in diverse institutional contexts.

This publication presents composite indicators on participation in VET which are constructed based on data provided by Eurostat from joint data collection on education (UOE), Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS) and EU Labour Force Survey (LFS). They will be further used to monitoring the developments in vocational education and training across European countries. Indicators on participation in vocational education and training (both initial and continuing) are presented and analysed.

This paper explores the relationship between education and innovation. Specifically, the paper explores the relationship between educational benchmarks indicators and innovation composite indexes. Relationships are relatively weak and differ considerably depending on which countries are taken into account for the analysis. Old Member States (15 Members, before 2004) tend to have stronger correlations between innovation and educational indicators. Lifelong learning seems to be the factor most commonly associated with innovative countries.

This publication analyses participation patterns in lifelong learning in the European countries. It describes the European political context in the field of lifelong learning and discusses the main monitoring issues at the EU level by looking at the EU benchmark set up in this area. Indicators on participation in education and training at various life-time stages are as well presented and analysed in the publication. A composite measure of the overall participation in lifelong learning for European countrie`s is constructed and analysed in the publication.

This report aims at analyzing the determinants of the employability of the individuals targeted by the benchmark. It starts with a short presentation of the benchmark indicator. It then estimates the probability of being employed for the 20-34 years old cohort that graduated one to three years before and is not currently enrolled in any further education or training activity, controlling for individual characteristics and institutional factors.

The European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC) was carried out in 2012 to provide the Commission and the participant countries comparable data - across skills and languages - of foreign language competences of secondary school students. The data collected in the 16 participating educational systems includes the results of language tests according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and the results of the different administered questionnaires.

DOER Directory of Open Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources from Commonwealth universities and educational institutions.

ITAG (Interactive Technologies and Games) Conference 2014

A short description of the VET system in Greece.

An overview of the VET system in Malta.

An overview of the VET system in Luxembourg.

This multilingual glossary defines 130 key terms used in European education and training policy. It also takes into account new priorities of European Union policy, mainly in skills and competence needs analysis. New definitions have been developed with the cooperation of experts from CEDEFOP's research and policy analysis team.

This Guide, by AELP,  pulls together all the various complex strands of policy and process that go to make up the employability and skills offer to unemployed people. It also provides ‘hints and tips’ based on real experience to help learning and skills providers make sense of those strands and consider how they might best respond to the challenges posed by the ongoing changes to the Adult Skills Budget (ASB), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Education Funding Agency (EFA) programmes.