Welcome to our latest update.

In this issue:

Europe’s digital transformation is accelerating but its skills base is not keeping pace. Despite years of policy focus, only around half of Europeans possess even basic digital competences, while employers across sectors increasingly report that skills shortages are constraining investment, innovation, and growth. The challenge is no longer about recognising the importance of digital skills. It is about delivering them systematically, equitably, and at scale.

As generative AI reshapes societies, European education and training policy faces a central challenge: how to harness AI’s potential while maintaining the human core of learning - critical thinking, ethical judgement, hands-on skills and social interaction. Across Europe, VET and education policymakers are experimenting with ways to safeguard human learning in AI classrooms, ensuring that technology complements, rather than replaces, human interaction.

Generative AI is rapidly reshaping the world of work, raising a fundamental question for European skills policy: will it widen inequality or help reduce it? The answer depends less on the technology itself and more on how it is governed, accessed, and embedded in education and training systems, including vocational education and training (VET).

Welcome to our latest update! Ιn this issue:

• Toolkits on the Move: Events Across Europe
• Coming up next: 4th ambassadors’ webinar & new research on NEETs
• What’s new in our VET toolkits
• Latest Toolkits’ Blog Articles
• Cedefop contributions to the European School Education Platform
• News and achievements from our ambassadors
• Welcoming new ambassadors & a new team member

When teachers grow, so do their students. Across Europe, the evidence is clear: investing in teachers’ professional development drives better learning outcomes and helps build a skilled, resilient workforce. Yet, too many vocational education and training (VET) teachers still face persistent barriers to developing their skills and advancing their careers. 

Vocational education and training (VET) teachers are shaping the future of nearly 43% of Europe’s youth aged 15 to 19. Every day, they help young people build the skills, confidence, and curiosity they’ll need for life and work.

For teachers to continue inspiring others, they themselves need to be supported, healthy, and prepared for the challenges of today — and tomorrow.

In this blog article, you will find a collection of the following information:

• Cedefop events on inclusion
• Promoting our toolkits in EU events
• New resources available on the VET toolkits
• Cedefop related publications
• News from our ambassadors and our new members

Cedefop’s (the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training) mission is to promote vocational education and training (VET) for excellence, making young people more employable and empowered with the knowledge, skills and competences needed to build a bright future. This may only happen, if we strive for safe and inclusive educational systems, that care and respect the needs and the well-being of every single learner, enabling them to thrive emotionally, socially, and academically. 

In this blog article, you will find the following information:

• Relevant events across Europe
• New resources available on our VET toolkits
• News from our ambassadors, including one new member of the network
• News from the European Commission
• Get to know our new VET toolkit team member

In this blog article, you will find the following information:

• VET toolkit team presence at relevant events across Europe
• New publications in the field of inclusion now available
• Recent changes in the team and recently published call for tender
• News from our ambassadors including new network members

The end of the year is a great moment to reflect on past achievements and lessons learnt, take stock of activities carried out and set new objectives for the year to come. It is a moment we wish to share with all of you, our Ambassadors, with a compilation of what we, Cedefop VET4Youth team and Ambassadors for tackling early leaving from VET, have achieved together. Our New Year’s resolution is to further strengthen our collaboration in 2024!

While celebrating the European Year of Skills and with VET institutions striving to enable individuals to reach their full learning potential, 1 in 10 young people in Europe still does not qualify in upper secondary education (9.6% in 2022). These low-educated young people, known as early leavers from education and training, are more likely to experience lower levels of professional accomplishment, well-being and life satisfaction.

With digitalisation accelerating, digital skills are at the core of employability. Vocational education and training (VET) policies rightly emphasise how crucial it is that Europe’s citizens have the possibilities and means to develop, upgrade or update their digital skills. To be fully effective, such policies need to be complemented with maximising teachers’ and trainers’ teaching potential to use technology and developing a positive attitude towards the need for conscious, ethical and inclusive use of digital tools.

Taking stock of the latest activities carried out within Cedefop VET4Youth team and the Ambassadors for tackling early leaving from VET, we are sharing a summary of the latest highlights, wishing everyone a restful summer break with this good read!

Just as we are about to enter 2023 year of skills, we have a good reason to celebrate: Cedefop VET toolkit for tackling early leaving has reached 20 key intervention approaches!

More than 14 million people are thought to have fled their homes since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to UN's International Organisation for Migration (IOM). About eight million people are displaced inside the war-torn country, while six million have left for neighbouring countries. From them, 2 million are school age.

Cedefop’s VET toolkit for tackling early leaving has been enriched with a new intervention approach on digital inclusion providing guidelines to integrate technology in VET educational practices in an effective way.

The use of digital tools opens a wide range of learning opportunities, especially for students with special needs and learning difficulties. ICT can facilitate and complement different teaching methods and lead to positive outcomes if it is well-targeted and certain conditions, such as the provision of digital guidance to VET teachers and practitioners, are met.

Supporting policy-makers and practitioners to promote inclusive excellence in VET

In order to provide practitioners and policy-makers with practical support, Cedefop launched the VET toolkit for tackling early leaving in May 2017 and its updated edition in 2019.

Starting the school year 2020/21 in the midst of a pandemic poses a host of new challenges for schools, teachers and training providers.

Cedefop’s ambassadors for tackling early leaving from education and training call for further support to address the needs of learners at risk and ensure their equal access to quality distance learning.

This is the first of a series of activities that you can use to promote reflection and good practice on how to tackle early leaving from education and training.

Cedefop’s study ‘Leaving education early: putting vocational education and training centre stage’ aims to increase knowledge

This is the second of a series of activities that you can use to promote reflection and good practice on how to tackle early leaving from education and training.

This is the third of a series of activities that you can use to promote reflection and good practice on how to tackle early leaving from education and training.