Education and Training 2020; Offering the Workplace Skills that Young People Need Today

Experts of the EU held discussions on how to ensure that training and education systems promote the skills, employability and innovation needed by young people and also in increasing equality and social mobility in a recently held conference of ACCA-PwC at Brussels.

Just as it was reported at the Annual Global19^th PwC survey, the concern of 72 % of all the CEOs is just about obtaining staff with crucial skills. SMES are also concerned with getting people with relevant skills during which time the skills are crucial for productivity, competitiveness and innovative capacity. Thus, policy makers are looking for ways in which the business can reduce this gap.

While shedding light on this crucial question, the ACCA and PwC held a conference in Brussels whose major objective was in raising awareness with regard to economic benefits of investing in young people’s skills and in sharing best practices. Included in the panel were experts from European Commission and the training and education world from the youth side and employer. Their main discussion was ensuring that the training and education systems are able to promote skills, employability and the innovation needed by young people. Additionally, equality and social mobility are also increased.

The Learning Director at ACCA, Mary Bishop started the debate by saying that it is vital to have a better match between the supply of labour and skills in the long run for Europe’s long term and short term competitiveness and growth.

From the discussions, it was established that societal challenges and the labour market call for a strong training and educational base in combination with good generic, professional and academic skills. Also highlighted in the debate is the urgent need to develop a spirit of entrepreneurship with a strong focus on digital skills. It is crucial to cultivate entrepreneurship and work readiness from school at an early age in order to create a link between practice and theory. It is important to have partnerships in business education and collaboration with other national operators. Such existing initiatives as Training and Education 2020, Europe 2020 Strategy and the agenda of European skills should be properly streamlined in order to get consistency and better results. Further, they should focus on E & T modernization systems and also the outcomes in the quality of learning.