Commission launches 'Opening up Education' to boost innovation and digital skills in schools and universities

More than 60% of nine year olds in the EU are in schools which are still not digitally equipped. The European Commission on 25 September unveiled 'Opening up Education', an action plan to tackle this and other digital problems which are hampering schools and universities from delivering high quality education and the digital skills which 90% of jobs will require by 2020. 

To help kick-off the initiative, the Commission on 25 September launched a new website, Open Education Europa, which will allow students, practitioners and educational institutions to share free-to-use open educational resources.

More information about Open Education Europa.

Click here for the Press release of the European Commission.

The European Commission’s Communication “Rethinking Education”

European education and training systems continue to fall short in providing the right skills for employability, and are not working adequately with business or employers to bring the learning experience closer to the reality of the working environment. These skills mismatches are a growing concern for European industry's competitiveness, says the most recent Communication of the European Commission, appealing to EU Member States to set actions. 

The Communication underlines the importance of tapping on the potential of ICT for education and teaching and highlights the need to develop transversal skills (such as problem solving, team work etc. often also referred to as soft skills) and entrepreneurial skills as they not only contribute to new business creation but also to the employability of young people. 

In this respect, the Communication emphasises at several instances the importance of languages. In a world of international exchanges, the ability to speak foreign languages is a factor for competitiveness. Languages are more and more important to increase levels of employability and mobility of young people.

Further education in STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – is needed if Europe wants to compete with countries like Brazil, China and India that spend more on high skilled STEM education than the USA, Japan and UK together. 

More information about the full document.

Europe opens to the challenge of Qualified Training in ICT sector

Last December the European partners of 5 countries met in Genova (Italy) to kick off the Leonardo Da Vinci Project Vet QI (Vocational and Educational Training Quality in the ICT sector). The challenge is to elaborate on the  European quality parameters of  training for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the  Information and Communication Technology sector.

The partnership composed by, Dispos (Italy), Eurofortis (Latvia), MPS (France) , IPF (Spain) and WSBINOZ (Poland) and led by For s.a.s (Italy) is motivated to work  and produce a Quality Control System allowing the SMEs’ staff to be more competitive and in the same conditions of large companies, that have already developed high standard quality systems for training. The aim  is to develop innovative methods for Vet operators on the basis of the confrontation with market needs, stakeholders’ perspectives and European policies about quality in VET.  These themes are all increasingly focused by European policies and are summed up in the EQAVET  European Quality Assurance in Vocational Education and Training descriptors, that have been considered as a source of inspiration for the project design.

This is the start for a new  challenge  aimed at spreading the culture of qualified training in Europe.

More information and ongoing updating are available on the project’s website.

Qualifications frameworks in Europe: modernising education and training

The following briefing released by CEDEFOP explains the important role qualifications frameworks are playing in Europe and the challenges to ensure the success of National Qualifications Frameworks.

A clearer understanding of what qualifications mean will make it easier for people to move from one type or level of learning to another; for example, from general education to vocational education and training (VET), from school-based training to apprenticeships, or from upper-secondary to university.

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CEPIS report identifies "e-Competences of European IT Professionals”

A new report published by The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) examines the e-competences of 2000 IT professionals from 28 countries across Europe. The purpose of this research is to produce and assess an up-to-date picture of the actual digital competences of IT professionals across Europe today, using profiles recognised by the labour market and analysing them based on the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF).

Some of the key findings of the report show that only 21% of professionals had the e-competences to match their declared profile. While IT Manager is the most declared job profile, only 8% of those who exercise the function appear to have all e-competences required for the function.

Based on its research CEPIS puts forward the following conclusions and key recommendations:

1. The young talent that Europe needs is lacking – promoting the IT profession among young people is essential.

2. Continuous Professional Development needs to play a greater role and should be targeted to existing and anticipated e-competence gaps.

3. Career paths with defined training and education requirements are needed.

4. All countries urgently need to address the gender imbalance

5. The e-CF should be applied as a pan-European reference tool to categorise competences and identify competence gaps.

Download “Professional e-Competence in Europe; Identifying the e-Competences of European IT Professionals”

Four new e-Jobs Observatory platform supporters

ANEI, the Spanish asociation for Internet companies, For Business Consulting from Italy, Grup patronal România Moldova from Romania and the French association for multimedia jobs (AME) joined recently the e-Jobs Observatory partner network.

The four new partners appear now in the "about" section of the site together with other supporters and they will acquire editorial rights which will allow them to share information on the platform and participate in the restricted collaborative working group of e-Jobs supporters.

If you are interested in joining the network please fill in the form or contact us.

French billionaires founding European School of Internet Professions

French billionaires Xavier Niel, Marc Simoncini and Jacques-Antoine are founding the European School of Internet Professions in Paris.

The three first generation Internet billionaires had a hard time finding people with the right qualifications and skills.

Therefore this privately owned school wants to train 150-200 students through a three year program in web programming, web design and other disciplines of the sector.

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Lack of educational software and support staff to foster ICT in Education

The new report “Key Data on Learning and Innovation through ICT at School” published by the European Commission examines the evolution of ICT infrastructure in schools in terms of networks, hardware and software.

The document looks at how ICT is being used in educational processes and incorporated into curricula before focusing on its role in enabling the development of innovative teaching methods. It also examines the promotion of transversal as well as job-related key competences, and the role of ICT in this process.

One of the key findings of the report shows that there is not a great disparity between schools in availability of ICT equipment but that there is still a lack of educational software and support staff. Teachers usually acquire ICT-related skills during their initial training, but further professional development is less common but needed.

Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner responsible for Education, Culture,Multilingualism and Youth indicates that “The solution to an effective use of ICT in education, however, is not technology itself. Most European countries have made significant investments over the last years with a view to ensuring universal access to ICT, with considerable success. The focus of today's policy in the field should now move to advancing our understanding of how the new technologies are and can best be used in schools to support learning, and what are the barriers in the way of success.”

Download the report

14 new e-Job descriptions to improve training offers in EU

The e-Jobs Observatory platform now includes a new section on e-Jobs Profiles to provide information about ongoing work on e-jobs descriptions. The sections contains descriptive information about each job profile as well as the option to comment it. You can find here below the names of the first 14 new e-Job descrptions:

• Digital animator /2D-3D specialist
• Digital Media Designer
• e-Learning Designer
• Internet e-Comerce specialist
• Internet Hotline Operator
• Online Community Manager
• Usability specialist
• Webmaster
• Web and multimedia master
• Web content manager
• Web content / multimedia developer
• Web designer
• Web Marketer
• Web Seller

The profiles have been generated by the following initiatives:

-The EQF-Code project. The EQF-Code project aims at transferring and applying the European Qualification Framework and e-Competence Framework to Multimedia professions in the field of Content Development.
-The EQF i-Serve project. The EQF i-Serve project aims at helping training organizations to develop trainings that correspond to the needs of the industry and are based on emerging knowledge, skills and competences description standards that guarantee comparability across Europe. The profiles are based on the e-Competence Framework of CEN.
-The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) under the EUCIP programme. EUCIP creates confidence in a pan-European skills standard for ICT Professionals, helps to close the IT skills gap, and increases the labour market value of certified practitioners.
- CompTIA TechCareer Compass, a worldwide Information Technology (IT) repository for resources critical in attracting, training and developing properly skilled IT workers.

More information

Relating national qualifications levels to the appropriate levels of the European Qualification Framework (EQF)

European countries participating in "Education and Training 2020" have been invited to relate their national qualifications levels to the appropriate levels of the EQF and to indicate in all new qualification certificates, diplomas and Europass documents the relevant EQF level.

The results can be found in the "Compare Qualifications Frameworks" page, where it is possible to compare how national qualifications levels of countries that have already finalised their referencing process are been linked to the EQF.

The EQF portal also provides information on:

- "EQF implementation"
- "Key Terms" that are agreed by all countries participating in the EQF
- "Documentation" such us legal text of the recommendation on the establishment of the EQF, other key policy documents and EQF notes.
- "Useful links"
- "EQF Newsletter"

More information

Roundtable meeting in Bilbao, Spain

GAIA and the Faculty of Engineering of Deusto University carried out a round table meeting in Bilbao, Spain, on March 30th, 2011. People from different sectors attended the meeting: Education, ICT, Energy, Consultants and Human Resources Managers.

The meeting had the valuable participation of one of the members of the expert group who prepared the report “New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now” for the European Commission, on February 2010, Professor Julia González, Vice-Rector for International Relations of Deusto Univerysity and General Coordinator of the Project Tuning Educational Structures in Europe.

Prof. González explained the importance of the policy initiative developed at EU level to build stronger bridges between the world of education and training and the world of work. After Prof. Gonzalez’s participation, Ligia Whyte, from GAIA presented the PIN Project, its background, and the e-Jobs-Observatory Platform.

Once the participants had a better picture of the current situation in Europe regarding education, training, e-skills, profiles and jobs, three round tables were integrated to discuss the topics.

Current situation:

From the point of view of the “Education Sector”, it is needed an investment in “competences” in a massive and intelligent way, there must be adequate incentives for individuals and employers. Employers: invest in their personnel; individuals: incentives for education and learning. It is important to make closer the worlds of education, training and employment, create the proper group of competences and establish educational programs based on profiles. It is important to anticipate necessities, and be open to talent, in this sense; it was also mentioned the value of talent from immigrants in Europe, which is most of the times underestimated in the labor market, it would be a great advantage for Europe to manage the talent flow in an adequate way instead of limiting it. Europe doesn´t have the enough and high level competences needed to guarantee the appropriate future that is looking for, and it is urgently to act immediately.

From the point of view of “companies”, the near future will demand the profiles related to “internet”, they consider what is not related to internet, “it doesn´t exist”. The profiles with a great demand will be the ones related to telecommunication and information services for other companies or individuals. The IT sector is moving fast towards the “cloud computing”.

This group considers that the future will be a mixture of two important issues: ICT and Health. The future will be the meeting point of all the different existing sectors involving/supported by ICT. For this group, it is everyday more important the development of skills and competences to fulfill the requirements of their job positions.

It was detected how important is for big companies the university degree for their job positions; meanwhile, SMEs are fine with qualification of people from VET institutions. What is agreed by both parties is that people have proper technical education, but there is a lack of soft skills, which should/must be improved.

Regarding the sectors, professions and jobs of the future, it was defined:

Ø Sectors: Energy, Health, Robotics and Information.

Ø Professions: The ones related to: Search Engine Optimization, Marketing specialized in Internet, Internet Security, e-Content Development, Copy/Internet Journalist, Social Community Manager

As mentioned previously, poor development of “soft skills” is one of the most important issues faced by companies. People should be more flexible, creative, able to adapt to constant changes and positive attitude.

It was also detected the growing necessity for companies that employees be able to work in multidisciplinary fields. As an example, it was mentioned how many times lawyers are not able to manage properly the basic ICT tools necessary for daily tasks. In the same way, how employees working in the field of e-content development don’t have the proper knowledge of law to avoid any legal inconvenience for the company.

Participants representing companies, considering the issue of “soft skills”, mentioned that a way of improving this situation, educational organizations should encourage their pupils to think in a global way, in order to be more flexible to changes, to adapt easier to them. Implementing team work, and also encourage them to get practices by their own, instead that schools find a place for their practices.

Conclusions:

Ø Europe doesn´t have proper and enough competences to guarantee a proper future; it is clear the importance and need to work and define competences.

Ø The sectors that will have more demand in the future will be: Energy, Health, Robotics and Information.

Ø The ICT sector is moving to the Cloud Computing.

Ø The professions for the future are the ones related to: Search Engine Optimization, Marketing specialized in Internet, Internet Security, e-Content Development, Copy/Internet Journalist, and Social Community Manager.

Ø The labor market needs people with strong soft skills and able to work in multidisciplinary fields.