Flagship area “Reskill and upskill”

Submitted by Veronika Muller on 20 January 2021

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Webinar on 4 November 2020

In order to benefit from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the main instrument for the European economic recovery, Member States should submit their draft recovery and resilience plans outlining national investment and reform agendas that are in line with the EU policy criteria. The Commission strongly encourages Member States to include in their plans investment and reforms in seven flagship areas: Power up, Renovate, Recharge and Refuel, Connect, Modernise, Scale-up, and Reskill & Upskill.

The flagship area “Reskill and upskill” is defined in the Annual Growth Strategy 2021:

“Unprecedented investments in re- and upskilling are central to supporting the green and digital transitions, enhancing innovation and growth potential, fostering economic and social resilience and ensuring quality employment and social inclusion. Investments and reforms should focus on digital skills and educational and vocational training for all ages. In 2019, still 42% of Europeans do not have at least basic digital skills. By 2025, the share of Europeans aged from 16 to 74 with basic digital skills should increase to reach 70%. ​

Education systems needs to be further adapted to the challenges of the 21st century. Member States should ensure that pupils’ digital competence is significantly improved, in order to reduce the share of 13-14-year-old students who underperform in computer and information literacy to under 15%. Member States should pay special attention to disadvantaged groups, women and in particular young people entering the labour market, by creating quality employment opportunities, and supporting adequate offer of apprenticeships and strengthening vocational education and training (VET). By 2025, at least four in five VET graduates should be employed and three in five should benefit from on-the-job-training.​”

Joaquim Solana Monleon from CENFIM furnishing cluster presented the project DIGIT-FUR about forecasting the use of technology and transform the results to a skills need analysis. The project DITRAMA then tackled challenges from skills needs identification to the actual training. Formal vocation education and trainings cannot give actualised responses to the most innovative technology skills needed. In order to support companies, all future projects need a skills analysis along value chains and accelerate training programmes. Clusters are the right actors to perform these tasks.

Ulla Engelmann from DG GROW gave an update on the Roundtables for Skills of the European Commission, which also gather representatives of clusters. Five of the 14 industrial ecosystems defined for the recovery and industrial strategies have started to work on the skills issue. The aim is to develop clusters of mutual learning and training to support the digital and green transition.

A recording of the session is available here.

This is the presentation shown during the meeting:

Find information and recordings of previous meetings on the Role of Clusters in Accelerating the European Recovery (since September 2020) here. For European Alliance Against Coronavirus webinar summaries of March - July 2020, please follow this link.

Finally, please find information on the upcoming agenda here.

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