EAEA very much welcomes the adoption of CULT Committee report on Erasmus+ 2021-2027 by the European Parliament in March 2019. Erasmus+ is an outstanding and crucial programme for adult learners, as it has supported adult education organisations from all over Europe in their efforts for more innovation and cooperation in the sector.

Upskilling Pathways Recommendation was adopted in 2016 with the aim to support adults with low levels of skills and enhance their literacy, numeracy and digital skills. In February this year the European Commission (EC) published a stocktaking report on the implementation of the initiative in the Member States. EAEA has also collected feedback from its members on the implementation of this strategy in 2018, and we will compare the feedback to the findings of the EC’s report.

Ruth Jermann, former Deputy Director of SVEB and member of the EAEA Executive Board, succumbed to her serious illness on 17 March 2019.

The 2019 EAEA Grundtvig Award celebrates life skills! This year, EAEA Grundtvig Awards will be given to organisations or project consortiums that present best examples of projects or initiatives promoting life skills.

The updated manifesto outlines nine challenges where adult education can play a key role. With the manifesto, EAEA wants to underline the transformative possibilities of adult education and the positive experience of Learning.

The European Council adopted the Upskilling Pathways strategy in December 2016. EAEA has collected feedback from its members on the state of the implementation and the impact of this strategy, and would like to highlight some key recommendations based on the feedback.

The third meeting of the Lifelong Learning Interest Group of the European Parliament in 2018 took place on 4 December as part of the 2018 Lifelong Learning Week.  The meeting gave the opportunity to Members of the European Parliament and representatives of civil society and other stakeholders to discuss the topic of investing in education and lifelong learning, together with Mr Jyrki Katainen, European Commission Vice President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness. Meeting was organised by the Lifelong Learning Platform (LLLP) and EAEA.

EAEA and its members strongly believe that the challenges faced by the adult education sector, and society at large, can only be solved in cooperation. The policy paper “Partnerships and Cooperations in Adult Learning” concludes the thematic work of EAEA on the topic in 2018.

A toolkit for providers, policy makers and stakeholder organisations

Within the framework of the Life Skills for Europe (LSE) project, a toolkit has been launched to support adult education policy makers, providers and stakeholder organisations to better understand the benefits of the life skills approach and incorporate life skills strategies into practice.

For the fifth consecutive year EAEA launches its annual country reports in order to provide a civil society insight into the situation of adult education across the continent. The reports outline developments in adult education in different European countries over the past year while they are providing a ground for comparisons between countries. The 2018 edition gathers information from 37 countries.