Youth skills development: Helping young people achieve their full potential

15 Jul 2024

Ever since 2014, the United Nations General Assembly has designated 15 July as World Youth Skills Day: a celebration of the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment and entrepreneurship.

As an actor fully committed to supporting a broad range of initiatives for youth skills development, the ETF is an enthusiastic participant in the event. With the world youth population forecast to grow by more than 78 million between 2021 and 2030 – and low-income countries accounting for nearly half the increase – education and training systems need to step up to the challenge.

Tough times for youth

That challenge is complicated by the particularly difficult context that young people face today. The results of last year's PISA survey by the OECD revealed an unprecedented drop in maths and reading skills among young people throughout the world (with the exception of Singapore, Japan and South Korea), partly – but not only – as a result of the COVID pandemic.

"Today's younger generation is facing overlapping crises, and it is still paying for the pandemic," says Cristina Mereuta, the ETF's Coordinator for Active Labour Market Policies. "This is something that is pushing EU neighbouring regions to look at more effective ways of increasing employment and employability for young people."

Creating opportunities

The ETF is accompanying them in that process. Its action is framed by the Youth Guarantee scheme, the EU's continent-wide commitment to create opportunities for young people and drive structural reforms and innovation. Reinforced since the COVID pandemic, the Youth Guarantee now reaches out to a broader target group of 15- to 29-year-olds, ensuring that all of them receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, apprenticeship or traineeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education.

The Youth Guarantee is designed to focus on young people who are neither in employment, education or training (NEETs). Figures on NEETs in ETF partner countries indicate how pressing a problem the school-to-work transition is: the latest figures (2002) show that many countries have percentages of over 20% (including Armenia, Albania, Georgia and Turkey), and some between 29% and 32% (Palestine, Lebanon and Kosovo), compared to the EU27 average of 9.6%.

Regional initiatives

In that context, the ETF has welcomed the lead taken by countries in the Western Balkans, where political support for the Youth Guarantee was signalled by the Western Balkans Declaration in July 2021. The evidence from North Macedonia – the first non-EU country to adopt the Youth Guarantee scheme in 2018 – shows a reduction in NEETs from some 30% of young people to 22.8% in 2022.

Although it is difficult to isolate the impact of the policy from other factors – foreign investment, new infrastructure and new sectors like ICT, for example – it is clear that better outreach and tailored employment and on-the-job training programmes for young NEETs have paid off.

Navigating change

Another initiative which the ETF is championing is career guidance. Alongside the impact of the COVID pandemic, today's labour markets are undergoing historic disruptions as a result of accelerated automation, the green and digital transitions, globalisation and fluctuating demographics – with young people being particularly affected by the instability. In this context, career guidance offers an opportunity for individuals, economies and societies to build their resilience and better adapt to these challenging times.

Career guidance plays a crucial role in supporting people of all ages to navigate disruptions. But for young people in particular, it can foster a capacity to make important choices about education and career paths throughout their lives, enabling them to visualise and plan their futures.

To highlight its importance, the ETF has joined forces with UNICEF to produce Learning for Careers, a new study on the kinds of career guidance and career education services that young people want in Europe and Central Asia. Covering 11 countries, including those in the Western Balkans and some in Central Asia and the Eastern Partnership region, it looks at how career guidance currently works, and how improving it can impact youth employment and future careers. The study underlines how surviving in the labour market of the future requires an array of skills, ranging from digital and communication skills to career management skills too.

Key competences for lifelong learning

As such, career guidance is a key component in the ETF's promotion of lifelong learning.

"As a young learner, you need to be supported through opportunities to continue learning – smoothly and throughout your life – in a way that allows you to choose your trajectory, and takes your specific characteristics into account," explains Olena Bekh, the ETF's Coordinator for Innovative Teaching and Learning.

Alongside career guidance, this lifelong learning approach emphasizes key competences: the multifunctional package of knowledge, skills and attitudes that all individuals need for personal fulfilment and development, inclusion and employment. Micro-credentials represent another crucial pillar: when learning outcomes are backed by an authoritative body, disparate micro-credentials can be put together to certify that an individual possesses assessed and proven blocks of competences.

The ETF has been actively exploring this approach in its UA Re-Emerge(ncy) programme, which collects and adapts professional short modules and other e-learning resources from EU and EU-neighbouring countries to offer vocational e-learning, reskilling and upskilling to Ukrainian learners.

Tool for teachers

In parallel, the ETF's Creating New Learning initiative has developed Scaffold – a practical tool to help teachers integrate the key competences framework into their lessons and curricula. Consisting of 102 colour-coded cards, Scaffold guides educators from lesson planning through to assessment, demonstrating the links between transversal competences and helping teachers to identify and cluster learning outcomes according to teaching objectives, available resources, learning spaces and teaching duration.

Grassroots approach

All of these initiatives are taking place against the background of the Torino Process: the participatory process by which the ETF works with local stakeholders to analyse the VET policies in place in a country and identify priorities for the future. As we celebrate World Youth Skills Day, a key priority for the ETF is ensuring that reliable and relevant career guidance and skilling options are in place for young people, to best serve their interests across the continent and beyond.