The EAAL 2017–2019 Project Yielded Enormous Results

In the previous issue, we informed you of the continuation of the EAAL project in the 2020–2021 period. Before we go full throttle into new challenges, we should first look back at the previous period. We should definitely do so because we submitted an extensive final report at the end of February which demonstrated the complexity of our activity, while we received the news in May that the report had been accepted.

In the 2017–2019 project phase, we conducted a number of events, produced many video publications and recorded statements by important stakeholders, set up the Upskilling Pathways e-portal, disseminated our activities and products through various media and summarised them in the overhauled online EAAL e-bulletin.

There are many added values

EAAL consultation events in 2018 were an opportunity for designing new approaches and sharing experiences – both associated with the ESF projects dealing with guidance and validation as well as the acquisition of basic and vocational competences. The next three consultation events in 2019 provided support for national efforts – two overhauls of the national Adult Education Master Plan, while the last one was to support the development of the LLW project and mark its 25th anniversary. The first annual EAAL conference enriched the programme of the 2018 Annual Adult Education Conference, while the second dictated the content of the Regional EPALE conference hosted by Slovenia. The events have contributed to improve recognition of the messages featured in both documents – Resolution on a renewed European agenda for adult learning and Upskilling Pathways – New Opportunities for Adults. We used videos from certain events to design video publications that are discussed in a separate article.

The Upskilling Pathways e-portal complements the efforts with an overview of the existing national measures for the strengthening of the knowledge and skills of adult employees with a low level of education and/or low skills. We thus present how Slovenia is realising the EU Council Upskilling Pathways (UP) recommendation. We have supplemented the calls for tenders, which were mostly turned into ESF projects with strong implementing consortia, with examples of good practice. We believe that the e-portal can be a suitable tool for reporting on UP implementation that will be carried out by the European Commission among the Member States. We are therefore planning on its supplementation over the new period.

The EAAL e-bulletin is a new online newsletter that was published for 2018 and 2019 in Slovenian and English. We will fully exploit the advantages of this new design in the future – by notifying the readers at home and abroad about the progress of the EAAL project on an ongoing basis. Up until now, this was done once a year.

New Period with Less Broad, But In-Depth Work

The aforementioned upgrades to the tool and contents of the 2017–2019 phase will be complemented by six events dealing with the topics of the Forum on the Future of Learning organised on 24 January 2019 in Brussels: digitalisation of society, demographic changes (migrations and the ageing society), inclusion and citizenship, environmental challenges and technological change and the future of work. The first three forums are planned in conjunction with the joint campaigns of the LLW 2020 project, while the other three are planned for next year. The second branch of activities will be devoted to overhauling and upgrading of the Kam po znanje (Overview of the adult education offer in Slovenia) portal. The third will be devoted to the setup of a systematic communication strategy that will make our results available to various end users – policymakers, adult educators and learners.

Zvonka Pangerc Pahernik, MSc (zvonka.pangerc@acs.si), SIAE