This blog was published by NSS Spain and translated by NSS Ireland.

In order to ensure the development of individuals in a changing and interconnected world, it is essential to have access to training opportunities that enable the acquisition, development and functional maintenance of the competences necessary to enhance personal and professional aspirations. Non-formal learning is fundamental to understanding the value of education in its full scope, and to guide decisions related to learning throughout life (from childhood to adulthood and in the different roles that people exercise at the same time). “Organic Law 2/2006, of 3 May, on Education, guarantees in Article 5. 1 “lifelong learning, within and outside the education system, in order to acquire, update, complete and broaden capacities, knowledge, skills, abilities, aptitudes and competences for personal and professional development” takes into account non-regulated training, referring to “all those activities, means and areas of education that have educational value in themselves and have been expressly organised to satisfy educational objectives in areas of social life such as personal training, promotion of community values, socio-cultural animation, social participation, improvement of living conditions, artistic, technological, recreational or sporting, among others”.

Current references for the relevance of this training are, in addition to those mentioned above, the “European Pillar of Social Rights”; the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals”; the “European Skills Agenda”; the “Modernisation Plan for Vocational Training”, as well as the updating of the offer of the Aula Mentor Programme and the network of Classrooms (http://www.aulamentor.es/) which the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training is carrying out within the framework of the development of the Vocational Training Modernisation Plan.

Asunción Manzanares Moya

Deputy Director General for Guidance and Lifelong Learning at the General Secretariat for Vocational Training of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (Madrid)

This article has been published in the May issue of Educaweb’s monograph on the “Value of non-formal education”