Continuing vocational education and training (CVET), particularly employer sponsored CVET, is a key component of adult learning. It can contribute to economic performance and competitiveness as well as personal development and career progress.
This indicator is defined as the percentage of all those employed (in all enterprises surveyed) who participated in employer sponsored CVT courses in the reference calendar year for the survey (2020). CVT courses are training activities that are separate from day-to-day work activities and exhibit a high degree of organisation by a trainer or training institution. Employer-sponsored CVT courses are those paid fully or partly by the employer or occurring during paid working time.
Workers participating in CVT courses (% of employed)
Source: Eurostat, Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS).
Key points
In 2020, in the EU, 42.9% of workers participated in employer sponsored CVT courses. The highest percentage was in Czechia (82.8%), followed by Spain (65%) Luxembourg (56.9%), Slovenia (58.3%), Slovakia (56.8%), Spain (55.4%), Belgium and Sweden (both at about 50%). The lowest participation levels were in Greece (11.8%), Hungary (17.4%) and Romania (18.1%). 2020 saw economies and societies hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Compared to 2015, participation levels in the EU as a whole and in most countries went down. The EU saw a small drop of 0.5 percentage points, but at country level major changes occurred. The sharpest decreases were in Finland, Ireland, Slovenia and Austria (between 10 and 15 percentage points). Indicator values also fell considerably in Denmark (-9.1), Malta, Poland and Slovakia (by about eight percentage points). Participation in employer sponsored CVT courses increased in Spain (by 9.6 percentage points), Germany (5.6), and Latvia (3.5). Among non-EU countries, data were only available for Norway where participation at 51.9% was a slight drop compared to 2015, and Serbia (24.8%.)
Table 4. Workers participating in CVT courses (% of employed)
Source: Eurostat, Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS). Notes: b) ‘break in time series’, data are not presented when they are not available and/or do not support sufficiently reliable comparisons across countries or over time.
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