European Mid Life Skills Review Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Mid Life Skills Review

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Context
Europe is facing a demographic crisis, with a shrinking workforce coupled with increased demands for social services. The labour force in Europe is projected to decrease by an average of two million people every year until 2030. This represents a loss of 1% of its current size each year for the next 10 years. Yet, in many countries, most workers still retire (relatively) early. They often do so not because they want to, but because they feel compelled to, or that they do not have other options. Solutions need to be found to make work more sustainable, and to extend working lives in order to avoid old-age poverty and to reduce state expenditure on pensions and welfare. (Changing places: Mid-career review and internal mobility, Eurofound Report, 2017)

Recent OECD research has highlighted that there are many millions of adults in Europe with low levels of functional literacy and/or numeracy skills and that the majority of these are in employment (OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) 2019). This has negative implications for their employment potential and longer term career prospects. The concept of the Mid Life Skills Review is gradually gaining favour in many countries and the role of social partners in both lobbying for and delivering elements of this can be critical to its success (Eurofound 2017). The Learning and Work Institute and the TUC can take some of the credit for their campaign for everyone to have this mid-life entitlement at 50. Indeed, the recent (John Cridland) report on pensions in the UK included a recommendation to have a mid-life ‘MOT’ at 50 for, amongst other things, skills. This is the perfect time for this project, which can make a real and lasting impact.

Our recent ERASMUS+ Project developed the Value My Skills tool that takes users/learners through steps with clear instructions to identify and rate their skills, keep reflection notes, design an action plan and record their progress. The tool is best used in partnership with a learning coach – so that the learner can discuss their findings in a safe and supportive environment. The tool is freely available in several European languages.

Aim
We aim to add value to the already much used Value My Skills tool that was developed by the Mid Life Skills Review ERASMUS+ Project which successfully launched in 2019 and is hosted by the TUC. The potential benefits of our additional work in this field emerged from the evaluation of the Mid Life Skills Review ERASMUS+ project. We will extend the tool to new countries and boost functionality.

Innovations
Our project will develop a suite of innovative new materials to support the delivery of the Mid Life Skills Reviews. These include new Quick Win online modules that will enable learners to see positive impacts from returning to learning – vital given our target audience is hard-to-reach low skilled adults in the workplace. We will also build new online materials to help boost the support for the critical role of the skills coaches. To help with mainstreaming and wider adoption we will design new National Delivery Models, bespoke for each partner country. In addition, we will develop – an Occupation Profile Tool – that will enable the users/learners to see how their skills match with the skills needed for different occupations. This will be done by linking to the EU ESCO skills classification system. The user/learner will also able to see where a skills boost (via the Quick Wins for example) could lead to routes into other occupations. As the Value My Skills Tool uses workplace coaches to work through the Tool with the learners – the coaches from across the partnership will be encouraged to become ‘mid-life skills champions’, with the support of a virtual e-network. This network will support its members and share ideas and experience.

Finally, in keeping with the European priority for promoting the recognition of skills and qualifications, we will accredit the learning through the use of new online Digital Badges and will enable links to be made into the Europass CV Programme. Badging of this kind is increasingly valued and is an innovation which the lead partner has considerable existing expertise.

Impacts
We will gain sustainable impacts by: delivering a series of events in each partner country to highlight the new materials and support available; using social media to disseminate the positive outcomes from the mid-life skills reviews e.g. progression, promotion, career change etc; and ultimately through boosting the skills of hard-to-reach older workers within the labour market, benefiting themselves, their families, their employers and European labour markets. The partners have been selected as all have existing close working relationships with employers, policymakers and trade unions and all have significant experience in working in the adult education and skills sector and together we have the expertise to carry out all of the activities required within the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 299973 Eur

Project Coordinator

Trades Union Congress & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Työväen Sivistysliitto TSL ry
• THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• NATIONAL LEARNING AND WORK INSTITUTE
• UNIVERSITATEA DE VEST DIN TIMISOARA
• Saffron Interactive
• UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO-BICOCCA
• LANBIDE, Servicio Vasco de Empleo