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 key competences?

Surfing the wave of a fast-paced and ever-changing reality, the European Commission has proclaimed 2023 the European Year of Skills. This decision comes from the need to address the mismatch between employment needs and education sectors but it reveals a vision that places education as a sparring partner of the labour market. Breathing new life in the recent Council Recommendations on Individual Learning Accounts and Micro-credentials, in the work on validation and recognition, and implicitly into the Updated Skills Agenda, the announcement reveals the danger of conflating learning, and the adaptation to fight any challenge of our current times, to labour market participation.

LLLP would like to stress that this risks overlooking the key competences citizens need for life. We hold that transversal competences, encompassing and not being only limited to skills for the labour market, are the way forward for Europe. Transversal competences can be used in a wide variety of situations in life and at work and represent the right mixture of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that ultimately make better, more active citizens that find fulfilment in their work and are able adapt to the fast-paced changes. Critical thinking, problem-solving, and digital literacy cut across sectors, fields, tasks, eras and lives. Transversal competences inexorably lead to rethinking validation and guidance processes: how to make those skills more explicit and embed the lessons learned in validation and guidance provisions is a crucial endeavour for the wider education community. LLLP will insist on giving equal visibility to all key competences acquired in non-formal and informal environments. 

Sub-topics

• System level: Successful policies for transversal competences for learning and resilient societies

• Provider level: Embedding transversal competences in formal, non-formal and informal learning environments

• Learner level: Acquiring necessary transversal competences for active participation through non-formal and informal learning and their validation and recognition

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. 

Coming soon

The LLLAwards celebrate outstanding practices in lifelong learning. The 2023 edition features a special Jury, that will evaluate and award the best initiatives in Europe. Meet them here! 

Joao Albuquerque is a Member of the European Parliament. He holds a Bachelor´s Degree in Political Science and International Relations and a Master´s Degree in History, Defense and International Relations. He is currently Vice-Chair of the Delegation for relations with Brazil and Member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, the Committee on Fisheries and the Delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. Between 2017 and 2019, he chaired the Young European Socialists and, between November 2019 and September 2022, was assistant to the Vice-President of the European Parliament. From 2017 to 2019, he was advisor to the Minister of Home Affairs of Portugal, and held political advisory roles at the parish council of Lumiar, in Lisbon, in the areas of Public Policies, Urban Planning and Communication. He is currently the Coordinator of the Agenda for Equality of the Setabal Regional branch of the Socialist Party.

Seamus Boland is the President of Civil Society Organisations (Group III) of the European Economic and Social Committee. He is also CEO of Irish Rural Link. Previously, Mr Boland worked as Director of Midland Youth Services Ireland and was manager of two education centres. He has degrees in Speech and Drama and Rural development. Mr Boland is a farmer and has worked in civil society for over 40 years. This has included young people, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and rural people living in rural isolation. From 2007-2013, he was a member of the first Press Council of Ireland.

Marcella Milana is an associate professor in general and social pedagogy at the University of Verona (Italy) and honorary professor of adult education at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). She lived, worked and carried out research activities in North America (United States), Latin America (Argentina, Brazil), and Europe (Denmark, Italy). An expert in adult education and lifelong learning, her research interest bear on education policies and governance – at local, national, regional and global level, in a comparative perspective. Since 2023 she is the Chair of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA).

Elisa Gambardella is the Education and Lifelong Learning Coordinator of SOLIDAR Foundation since 2020. She was elected Vice-President of the Lifelong Learning Platform (LLLP) in 2021, and she represents the LLLP in the Steering Group of Civil Society Europe since 2022. She has represented these organisations as a member of the Plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe, to which she contributed particularly through its working group on Social Justice. She has 10 years’ experience in public authorities, think tanks and EU CSOs and she holds a master’s degree in European Studies.

Coming soon!