Discover all the events and register for as many as you wish! 
All events are in-person

With LLLP | 15.00 – 20.30 | Agenda and Registrations

To kick-start the LLLWeek 2022, we invite you to discover the Lifelong Learning Platform and our annual position paper on ‘Investment in Education and Training: A Public Good for All’. An interactive discussion will prepare you for the following reception, don’t miss out! 

With OBESSU & EFIL | 10.00 – 11.30 | Agenda and Registrations

Be it school mobility, volunteering, a future exchange during further education or apprenticeship mobility, one of the biggest barriers to school student participation in mobility remains access to information. What do school students and apprentices need, to be able to fully access and enjoy mobility opportunities?

With ECSWE, ECNAIS, OIDEL | 12.00 – 13.30 | Agenda and Registrations

This event will explore different funding systems for independent schools and their effects on the inclusiveness and accessibility of independent schools across Europe and make the point that a diverse education system with different providers is good for all children and families.

With EVTA | 13.30 – 14.30 | Agenda and Registrations

Vocational education and training play a vital role in developing adequate skills, attitudes, and behaviours on climate change and in supporting sustainable and inclusive development. During the webinar, participants will have the opportunity to learn about the framework established by the European Commission to fight against global warming and foster green education.

With LLLP & partners | 14.00 – 17.30 | Agenda and Registrations

This event will look at ways to increase young people’s motivation to choose STEM careers through an Innovative Cross-disciplinary STE(A)M approach to education.

With LLLP & EAEA | 16.00 – 17.30 | Agenda and Registrations

With this new meeting of the Lifelong Learning Interest Group of the European Parliament, we will be exploring issues related to investment, including what the EU is financing, how the Member States are topping up learning mobilities or the country-specific mobility programmes they have, as well as what support mediating stakeholders in E&T need for more mobility and cooperation.

With ESU | 10.00 – 11.00 | Agenda and Registrations

This workshop will explore the links between NRRPs and Country Specific Recommendations provided by the Commission within the framework of the European Semester. What place for education? What role for education stakeholders?

With ECSWE & Alliance for Childhood | 12.00 – 13.30 | Agenda and Registrations

The workshop will take the participants through the challenges in the existing digital media education policies, discussing whether a combination of analogue and digital media is the necessary combination for children and young people to learn to use media confidently. This will also be the 87th meeting of the Quality of Childhood (QoC) Talk.

With LLLP & FREREF | 12.00 – 13.30 | Agenda and Registrations

This policy workshop will be an opportunity for EU, national and regional policy-makers, experts, education and training representatives, and civil society representatives to discuss tools, practices and recommendations that aim to improve lifelong learning policies in EU regions.

With EVTA | 13.30 – 14.30 | Agenda and Registrations

Vocational education and training play a key role in innovation and digital transitions as well as in the resilience of a post-COVID-19 Europe. VET sector is well placed to respond to the skills challenges posed by digitalisation given its close ties with the labour market, therefore, during the webinar, participants will learn more about best practices and projects related to inclusive digital education, digital up-skilling of VET practitioners and SME’s workforce. 

With SOLIDAR Foundation & FICEMEA | 14.30 – 16.00 | Agenda and Registrations

This workshop will discuss and analyse the consequences of labour market-driven education policies as opposed to policymaking aimed at social inclusion and cohesion. As more and more profit-driven actors develop partnerships with education providers, the investment pattern change and only marketable skills seem to take centre stage in education.

With EPA | 14.00 – 16.00 | Agenda and Registrations

The aim of this workshop is for participants to become familiar with some techniques of how to develop and foster creative thinking in all aspects of life and inform them about where to find more enabling examples and how to disseminate them among peers.

With EfVET | 14.00 – 16.00 | Agenda and Registrations

This policy debate will focus on practical experiences with the implementation of micro- credentials at the national level and how their approach can be extended to other EU countries.

With EAEA | 17.00 – 19.00 | Agenda and Registrations

During this event, participants will explore powerful advocacy campaigns and inclusive teaching practices that bring forward the voices of those who tend to be left behind in the debate about the digital transition; and also discover some helpful tools that adult educators can use to help learners achieve success.

With AEGEE & partners | 09.00 – 16.30 | Agenda and Registrations

With the recent and ongoing migrations, it is undeniable that higher education institutions in Europe must be able to provide accessible and inclusive study paths for refugees and other third-country nationals. However, despite the Lisbon Recognition Convention and the Bologna Declaration, substantial obstacles remain.

With LLLP, EfVET & partners | 12.00 – 13.30 | Agenda and Registrations

Given the changes in the demand for employment and skills expected to materialise over the period to 2030, we ask ourselves what is the role of VET in meeting those skill needs and what is the investment needed to make sure those needs are met.

With EVTA | 13.30 – 14.30 | Agenda and Registrations

Existing structural inequalities and social challenges such as ageing, migration, unemployment, increasing poverty, austerity and climate change often hinder the advancement of social inclusion. During the webinar, participants will learn more about the role of vocational education and training in achieving social inclusive approaches.

With SIRIUS Network | 10.00-11.00 | Agenda and Registrations

This workshop draws inspiration from Warsan Shire’s poem ‘Home’ recognising that the trajectories of migrants and refugees are complex and interconnected with local and global responsibilities that those within and outside of the EU hold. We do this by asking why we should invest in migrant and refugee education within the borders of the European Union.

With EVTA | 13.30-14.30 | Agenda and Registrations

During this event, participants will have the opportunity to learn about the framework established by the European Commission to foster citizen’s participation in democratic life, social and civic engagement. 

With OBESSU | 15.00-16.30 | Agenda and Registrations

This event wants to be a meeting ground between students and policy-makers, where the former will present income-based barriers to participation coming from across the OBESSU membership, and local and national initiatives they put in motion to address them, while the latter will support them by suggesting possible paths to action and advocacy at the EU level.

Why a lifelong learning week?

Lifelong learning covers education and training across all ages and in all areas of life. It enables citizens’ emancipation and full participation in society in its civic, political, social and economic dimensions. A humanistic and holistic approach to learning, from the cradle to the grave, is of continued relevance in today’s world and a viable foundation for the rethinking of education. The Lifelong Learning Week aims to raise awareness of the fact that lifelong learning answers many challenges of modern societies. Fostering a comprehensive approach to education is especially important when it comes to building learning societies, by making sure that our citizens are fully equipped with the competences they need in the 21st century. The paradigm shift to lifelong learning means recognising that learning is taking place in various contexts – be it formal, non-formal or informal. It implies changing the ways we provide and receive education, the ways we assess learning and the ways we work and live together. 

Why investment?

During the LLLWeek, participants will be taken into the LLLP’s annual theme: ‘Investment in Education and Training: a Public Good for All‘. Investment in education and training remains, today, a broad theme and certainly a topical item on the EU’s agenda. LLLP wishes to approach the topic of investment from the standpoint of social inclusion – specifically in relation to closing the learning gaps amplified throughout the pandemic: how do we recover better? With the polar star of investment to bounce back, funding in education, training and lifelong learning opportunities should focus specifically on fair access, vulnerable groups and inclusion in representation. The latter is a crucial theme given the high interest in the EU and member states’ agendas on who is to fund lifelong learning: the answer to this question determines the crucial question of inclusion. This conversation started with the Finnish Presidency and the Council Resolution on financing education in 2019 and it continued with the Croatian Presidency who requested an opinion from the EESC on sustainable financing for lifelong learning in 2020.

The revision and launching of the new Skills Agenda introduced the idea of the Individual Learning Accounts. Following the health crisis, the EU launched the Recovery and Resilience facility where one of the main measures touches upon funding for upskilling and reskilling. Funding education and training is a recurrent issue that will continue to be high on the agenda for the years to come and which will be at the heart of the French Presidency too in 2022. The French Presidency plans to look at the right to lifelong learning and what instruments are to finance it. The pandemic questioned the funding of education and training and its impact on rising inequalities which will continue to be shown in the years to come. The new European Parliament initiative on the European Education Alliances is calling for an Education Investment Plan under the CoFoE. Social partners such as ETUCE are also using the CoFoE to call for lifelong learning opportunities for all and its respective funding. These are a few of the many initiatives under which this issue can be addressed.

Strengthening the role of public funding for education means, conversely, that education stays a public good for all. Therefore, “who” or rather “what instruments” finance lifelong learning are not questions to be taken for granted, as they entail cascade effects on the structures, pedagogies, objectives, curricula, inclusion and representation in education and training. Such an assumption should therefore not be taken for granted; the Lifelong Learning Platform will seek to explore its many facets during the year to come, with the usual support of its members and of the European institutions.

Format

During the LLLWeek, participants will be taken into the LLLP’s annual theme: ‘Investment in Education and Training: a Public Good for All‘. We will subsequently dwell on the policy framework that provides the tools useful to read our society and the impact it bears on learners. Different approaches can be deepened, as they all build up to the same overarching objective: 

1. Public good until what point? Public financing at risk
2. Commodification of learning and the human capital: serving markets and not learners
3. Education that empowers the already empowered: supporting inclusion

In fact, all of these will contribute to the goal that the Lifelong Learning Platform has always been pursuing: better societies through education and lifelong learning. 

The Lifelong Learning Week is hosted by MEP Milan Zver, member of the CULT Committee. Read his words here below. 

“The LLLWeek has deservedly become a much-anticipated event that is bringing together stakeholders and policy makers to exchange ideas and proposal on how to tackle educational challenges of today. I am honoured by the invitation of the LLLPlatform to be a host for this year LLLWeek. This year′s theme debate of the LLLWeek on the importance of investment in education and training is very timely.

Europe is facing several challenges, most difficult since the end of the World War II. The Russian Federation′s illegal invasion into Ukraine has changed our world overnight. Not only has Ukraine been attacked but our European values have been put at stake. Economic and energy crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, technological advancements are all drastically changing our way of life. At the same time, demographic trends and other factors require a later retirement age. These and other developments are resulting in an increasing need for quality lifelong education and training, likely to require additional human and financial resources. However, in response to the past and current crisis, a number of countries have cut their education, training, culture, research and development budgets in the last decade. Especially critical is the public under-investment in lifelong learning for adults. According to Cedefop’s latest estimates, 46% of the adult population in the EU-28 area will need to be upskilled or reskilled but at present only around 11% of adults benefit from adult learning.

We need to be aware that if we fail to sufficiently invest in human resources and adopt a lifelong learning approach there will be no sustainable, long-lasting development. Just for instance, at the core of some East Asian countries’ superior performance in technology and science there are quality educational systems that are adopting the lifelong learning approach much faster than EU. They are already the ones dictating development trends and thus profiting from them. Evidence demonstrates that public funding in education and training opportunities enhance the competitiveness of business and economies. Furthermore, appropriate level of public expenditure also improves social cohesion and promotes active citizenship.

The benefits of education and training can be enhanced in various ways. One of them is certainly through Erasmus+ Programme, which offers many opportunities for the educational, professional and personal development of people in education, training, youth and sport. As a Standing rapporteur for Erasmus + Programme, I am proud that we were able to secure additional funds for the period of 2021-27 to improve access for people who had fewer opportunities in previous programmes with a special focus on a lifelong learning. There is a need for continuous learning to be available to all persons. In general, the changes in employment are increasing and changing the skill levels required. Governments have a crucial role to play in ensuring financial resources for learning and training. Member states with the help of the EU should smartly invest in these vital areas, so that they can emerge stronger from the health, social, economic and financial consequences of the current situation.

This is a challenge that involves all of us, policy makers, stakeholders from all sectors and citizens. To achieve a successful economic, digital and green transformation, a common effort and respect for each other and our differences are required. We must do all in our power to make it happen. In this sense, I warmly welcome the contribution of LLLPlatform, which highlights the need for the investment in quality education and training.”

Come join us during the 12th edition of the LLLWeek to address this year’s theme ‘Investment in Education and Training: a Public Good for All‘ with MEPs, representatives of the European institutions, civil society organisations, practitioners and other education stakeholders!