Training & Skills Development

As Europe goes through its green and digital transformations, high-quality vocational education and training (VET) is key to ensuring people have the right skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow. The Council Recommendation on VET for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience, adopted in November 2020, sets out the EU’s comprehensive vision and strategic objectives for the future of VET. This brochure outlines this vision and the importance of VET reforms at national level, including key principles and actions to support these reforms.

This white paper sets out reforms to further education, recognising that the UK economy is changing rapidly. The pandemic, Brexit, climate change, the expected growth of jobs requiring STEM education or training had collectively snowballed into a skills shortage in recent years – young people did not have the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed in the current and future economy.

There are over 1.2 billion adolescents in the world today, an all-time high. The vast majority of these 10-to-19-year-olds live in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs). Adolescence is a transformational phase of human life, but also a period of heightened risk and vulnerability. International literature identifies quality secondary education as a pivotal factor in raising future opportunities for adolescents.

In partnership with IBM, the OECD recently conducted a social media poll, asking young people how well prepared they feel about joining the world of work, how confident they are about their future paths, and what concerns them about education and jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode, the OECD and IBM discuss insights from the poll and why career guidance and real-world work experiences are more important for young people than ever.

These guidelines provide information, guidance and tips on organizing and managing virtual internships. They focus on those aspects of an internship that are particularly important for internships conducted entirely virtually, and these where all activities and interactions are performed remotely.

Despite growing interest in this topic, however, there is no clear consensus about which soft skills are likely to produce the most significant benefit to youth and to what extent these skills are similar or different across key outcome areas. This report identifies the core soft skills that would create positive outcomes across important areas of youth’s lives, including workforce success, violence prevention, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH).

Digital technologies can facilitate new opportunities and create challenges for the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sectors. This report provides a global, high-level snapshot of the digitalization of TVET and skills systems in a set of countries and international organizations.

With the COVID-19 crisis canceling many events, many summer youth employment programs/internships have also been scrapped. This toolkit is orientated toward addressing common challenges imposed by social distancing and the need to pivot to virtual experiences. 
 

The knowledge brief describes Global Communities' approach to implementing sustainable workforce development interventions at scale that targeted the informal construction sector. It outlines the key elements of the approach, assesses whether there are early signs of sustainability, and presents some recommendations. 

This brief outlines the elements of the improved apprenticeship model developed by Global Communities in the construction sector in Ghana and examines its effectiveness as an avenue to provide skills training to disadvantaged youth, facilitate their entry into employment, and provide some lessons learned.