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Beatriz Silvestre, Jordana Gasparinho, Margarida Cintra and Tiago Brito, who study filmmaking at the Escola de Tecnologias Inovação e Criação do Algarve, received their prizes and certificates from Cedefop Executive Director Jürgen Siebel and Thessaloniki International Film Festival General Director Élise Jalladeau. The school director, Nuno Ribeiro, received a prize on behalf of the team’s teacher José Jesus.

Around 200 guests, including students and teachers from the 2nd VET School of Thessaloniki-DYPA and the Thematic Public IEK of Thessaloniki, attended the ceremony, watched the winning and runners-up videos and followed a panel discussion on young people’s skilling and career prospects in the current, fast-evolving education and labour market environment.

Cedefop Head of Communication Maurizio Roncaccia welcomed the guests and talked about the award, which started life in 2016 as the #CedefopPhotoAward, proving a big success with European vocational education and training (VET) learners. A few years later, videos were added to the mix and, last year, the focus shifted to videos only. The theme of the first #CedefopVideoAward was ‘European Year of Skills: share your skills’.

Congratulating the winners, Mr Siebel said that ‘The aim of our award is to showcase the skills that people acquire through VET; skills that help them get interesting, fulfilling and quality jobs.’

Ms Jalladeau thanked Cedefop for the cooperation throughout the years, adding: ‘For the Festival, young people are always very important. We work on the next generation; we have volunteers and educational programmes.’

In the panel discussion that followed, which was moderated by Cedefop Press Officer Rosy Voudouri, young people’s skilling and career prospects took – literally – centre stage at the Festival’s Frida Liappa screening room, named after a well-known Greek cinema director.

Follow your passion

Jordana Gasparinho, the protagonist of the inspiring winning video, talked about leaving school at 18 and going back six years later to become a filmmaker: ‘We should be doing things in our life with a meaning. Back then, in my studies there was no meaning and I felt a bit lost. After six years, I asked myself what makes me happy every day and filming and taking pictures is what makes me happy. It is better to risk what makes you happy because you only live once, so do what you want to do with your life and don’t be afraid, risk.’

Reacting to that, Mr Siebel noted: ‘Maybe that’s the best piece of advice you can give to a young person, to try and find their vocation. That’s where we come in as Cedefop, because vocational education and training offers many opportunities that lead to a fulfilling and exciting life, not only in the creative industries, but also, for instance, in green and digital which are expanding sectors constantly looking for people.’

From the practitioners’ point of view, Mr Ribeiro said that ‘The idea of our school is simple: learning by doing. We don’t have teachers, we have professionals who teach, we don’t have students, we have future colleagues. And sometimes we act as a complement to university.’

The Director of the 2nd Vocational school of Thessaloniki-DYPA, Angeliki Filippidou agreed, offering an example: ‘This school year we have a student with a Master degree in theology; she is doing a doctorate and started with us in the textile and clothing speciality. Her apprenticeship is in a company that produces vestments for priests. She combines her previous higher education with this vocational course.’

Cedefop expert in microcredentials Anastasia Pouliou, a former teacher herself, explained to the audience the ways microcredentials can help them in their career and outlined the transversal skills they need to have the best chance in their learning and working lives. Closing the event, she also took questions from the learners.

More on the event:

• Cedefop podcast - Episode 24: Skills and careers for young people
• #CedefopVideoAward ceremony video highlights
• Photo gallery

Skills intelligence is the cornerstone of designing policy on skills and jobs for individuals, organisations, cities, regions and countries.

Building on over a decade of experience in developing and disseminating skills and labour market analysis, Cedefop marks the European Year of Skills with its upgraded skills intelligence tool, which brings together various strands of the Agency’s analytical and research work. The tool will be presented at a dedicated online event on 11 March.

With the tool, Cedefop aims to provide better and more synthetic evidence on current and future skill and labour market trends, using narrative-driven visualisations and concise thematic articles.

The major improvements include new thematic dashboards. These look at trends in employment and skills from different angles, such as digitalisation and technology, future employment trends, skills and learning and hiring and contract developments.

All in one place

The power of Cedefop's skills intelligence lies in the meaningful connection of all the relevant content in one place. E.g., the new thematic dashboard on digitalisation and technology features four key facts and eleven visualisations based on seven indicators coming from four different datasets; five data insights; five publications; and links to four other dashboards.

Data insights, short reports on skills-related topics, are now organised in thematic collections with improved layout, while 62 new or updated insights were added: twenty nine new reports on skills anticipation in European countries cover key elements, such as methods and tools, governance, and target groups. New occupation data insights explore skills and employment trends and challenges in 33 occupations; as well as suggestions and examples of VET responses.

New indicators

The revamped tool is also enriched with a new section on indicators, such as future employment growth, unemployment rate, or digital skills level, from which the thematic dashboards are developed.

The skills intelligence tool is a pinnacle of Cedefop’s work on skills and labour market analysis. Behind its reports and visualisations that get a lot of attention from all kinds of users, lie extensive and exacting work: from designing research ideas and data collection to quality control and user testing.

Finding ways to move the development of skills intelligence forward, reflect on challenges in analysing, providing, and using data and qualitative information in various organisational settings will be the focus of Cedefop’s upcoming virtual get-together on skills intelligence on 11 March.

Register here to attend and contribute to discussions between Cedefop experts, representatives of key stakeholders and users of skills intelligence.

This was one of the main conclusions of a workshop organised by Cedefop on 21 March, which attracted some 200 policy-makers, stakeholders, experts and researchers, who discussed the latest developments concerning national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) and the European qualifications framework (EQF) and trends across countries participating in the EQF process.

During the workshop Cedefop presented key findings of its policy brief ‘Building the European map of qualifications’, and the main functionalities of the NQF online tool.

The main topics discussed included:

• awareness of qualifications frameworks among citizens and how they benefit from them;
• opening up frameworks to different types of qualifications;
• the extent to which NQFs accomplish their objectives and influence education and broader policies;
• success factors, challenges and future priorities in NQF implementation.

The exchange of views between participants led to a number of conclusions. Among them, the fact that NQF awareness has increased but there is room for improvement, particularly when it comes to end users (learners, employees, jobseekers, employers, labour market stakeholders) who are often those who are less aware of NQFs. In addition, NQFs ought to be made more relevant for labour market stakeholders.

Furthermore, the trend to include qualifications awarded outside formal education and training, as well as microcredentials, into NQFs has advanced, and more countries are planning to follow, while NQFs need to adapt to the changing circumstances and, to remain relevant, they have to be responsive to the challenges of rapid technological and societal changes.

A driver of change

It was also established that the EQF and NQFs are linked to other education and broader policies and can act as a driver of change, for example they have significantly contributed to promoting the use of the learning-outcomes approach in education and training. Their major impact is increasing transparency and comparability of qualifications across education subsystems and borders.

Cedefop Executive Director Jürgen Siebel pointed to the areas to which efforts should be dedicated to increase the NQFs’ positive impact:

• Further enhancing transparency of qualifications and learning outcomes
• Raising awareness of #NQFs among citizens
• Opening-up frameworks
• Better capturing the impact of NQFs

During the meeting, Cedefop collected many pertinent comments, reflections and ideas on the upcoming 2024 update of the European inventory of NQFs and is planning to strengthen its networking with countries further and support them in NQF implementation.
 

The online database, which has been updated thanks to the contribution of Cedefop's community of apprenticeship experts, collects and presents structured, comparable information on apprenticeship schemes in European Union Member States plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. It is an invaluable tool in the hands of experts and policy-makers facilitating comparative analysis and best-practice research, particularly as European countries have been expanding and improving their apprenticeship schemes since the introduction of the European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships in 2018.

In a rapidly changing world of work due to digitalisation, artificial intelligence and the green transition, apprenticeships remain a rock-solid solution, easing transitions of young people from education and training to work and helping adults to upskill and reskill.

Bringing vocational education and training (VET) providers, employers and learners together in a structured way, quality apprenticeships can provide a well-rounded learning experience that allows learners to acquire the right skills required by changing labour markets, both now and with a longer-term perspective.

Data in the database are organised and provided by country and by apprenticeship scheme. 

• Each scheme fiche provides information on:
• how the scheme was established;
• which learner groups typically enrol;
• what qualifications they can obtain (type, level) and how they can progress in the education and training system;
• how the scheme is governed, detailing the responsibilities of State authorities and social partners;
• how training at the workplace is organised, including its share on the overall programme, the alternation type, the basis of training offered and the roles of in-company trainers/tutors;
• what type of contract and remuneration is foreseen for apprentices;
• who covers the main costs and what incentives are in place for companies and learners.

ESI, one of Cedefop's online tools, assesses the performance of European skills systems and the improvements made over time and highlights the areas where further attention should be given to. It is built on three pillars of investigation:

• skills development;
• skills activation;
• skills matching.

These three pillars are divided into six sub-pillars and then into 15 measurable indicators that are closely related to policy monitoring and questions. The performance of the overall skills system is summarised by the ESI score.

This year's ESI edition has gone through an independent statistical audit made by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre to ensure methodologically sound and robust results. Outcomes show clear signs of progress in all pillars through the last seven years, with skills development being the hardest to improve.

The outcomes of the 2024 ESI suggest that skills matching and activation have been improving significantly over time, giving people, especially younger ones, positive feedback regarding labour market in the years to come.

The 2024 rankings (figure 1 above), group countries into four broad categories based on their performance, but results indicate that all countries have significant room for improvement in all dimensions.

‘Skill systems play a crucial role in providing the necessary skills, which become particularly vital during periods of transition. Thus, vigilant monitoring of their effectiveness can facilitate a more seamless transition into the digital and green landscape’ Cedefop expert, responsible for developing the ESI, Ilias Livanos points out.