News Story

Towards a European Area of Skills and Qualifications

Peter Scott, Monday 23 Jun 2014

European learners and workers should be able to have their skills and qualifications understood and recognised, within and across national borders, by employers and by educational institutions. The tools that support this aim should be coherent, simple, and easy to use.

The EASQ conference in Brussels on 17th June 2014 took as a starting point the results of the public consultation and the Eurobarometer survey on “A European Area of Skills and Qualifications”. There was a hot debate about the existing European tools for the transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications; are these fit for purpose, and what is the scope to make them simpler and easier to understand by learners, workers and employers.

KMi’s Professor Peter Scott shared the stage with EU figures such as the Head of Unit, Skills and Qualifications Strategies; Multilingualism policies, Directorate General for Education and Culture, European Commission, Ms Ana Carla Pereira.

The core of the discussion was in the context of the new Eurobarometer Survey noting the critical link between learning and employment. EU business needs learners that fit to the new requirements of work, and EU learners have a right to demand that learning is fit for the purpose of a new world of work.