Seminar: Sectoral skills for the future – Blueprint in the spotlight

Unpublished

(From ec.europa.eu)

The seminar, which took place on 15 November in Brussels, was the first opportunity to discuss the implementation and policy messages of the five ongoing Blueprint projects.

The Blueprint for sectoral cooperation on skills, introduced in the Skills Agenda 2016, is a strategic approach to addressing short and medium term skills needs.

The first Blueprint projects are soon reaching the one-year mark:

The Blueprint seminar on 15 November 2018 provided an opportunity to share knowledge, to reflect on the challenges and breakthroughs so far, and to meet with stakeholders among and beyond the partnerships that will help to maximise the sustainability and impact of each Blueprint in years to come.

The seminar linked to the European Pillar of Social Rights, focusing more specifically on the Skills Agenda

The seminar discussed two broader themes: skills intelligence and the projects’ expectations of future skills policy.

While job-specific skills are vital across the five sectors, the participants underlined the importance of key competences. These include basic and digital skills, a mix of cognitive and socio-emotional skills such as problem solving, creativity, communication and collaboration, as well as ‘learning to learn’. Furthermore, they include STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The skills intelligence generated by the Blueprint projects will feed into the Skills Panorama.

The regional level was identified as a crucial one for achieving change and scaling up the impact. A proper coordination of policies at different levels and a stronger link between education & training and the labour market were some of the day’s policy messages.

The sectoral projects also highlighted the power of diverse alliances. The Blueprint’s model of transformative cooperation led by industries has a great potential to help prepare the various sectors for the future of work.

The next steps of the Blueprint projects will include the development of new or updated vocational education and training content as a building block of each project’s ultimate goal: a skills strategy for the sector.

Photo album

Check out the photos from the seminar on Flickr

Context

Alliances implementing the Blueprint bring together key labour market, education and training stakeholders and social partners in a given economic sector to deliver sector-specific solutions.

Funded by Erasmus+, each sector cooperates to identify skills needs and develops a comprehensive sectoral strategy as well as new or updated curricula where needed.

Continue the debate on social media with the hashtag #EUBlueprintSkills.

How to get involved? Contact the projects directly or reach out to empl-blueprint-skills-alliances@ec.europa.eu