Continuous learning
Continuous learning refers to learning that spans across people’s whole lives and covers different areas of life. The reform of continuous learning seeks to respond to the skills needs arising from changes in the world of work, with a focus on improving the skills of working-age people.
The cross-administrative reform project is being led by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education and Culture. The parliamentary working group on continuous learning has outlined the reform’s vision and objectives for 2030, along with 27 measures to achieve the objectives.
These key measures include:
- Establishing the Service Centre for Continuous Learning and Employment
- Providing funding for training that supports structural changes in the labour market
- Strengthening the competence of groups that are under-represented in education (including older people) through outreach, guidance, identification of prior learning, competence assessments, support measures and low-threshold training.
- Developing the production of foresight data concerning short, medium and long-term development trends
- Implementing the digital service package for continuous learning
Improving the availability of skilled labour
In the context of continuous learning, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment is responsible for developing guidance, mapping skills, and identifying needs for further skills development. The goal of this work is to prevent unemployment and improve the availability of skilled labour. Developing the tools used for identifying competence will make it possible to target investments in training more effectively and will help to improve people’s career planning skills. To achieve these objectives, it will be necessary to coordinate guidance, provide comprehensive information on guidance services and develop the competence of guidance professionals.
The labour market needs skilled labour. Improving the availability of skilled labour requires high-quality foresight data on the labour and skills needs in different sectors and regions, and on any changes to them. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment is responsible for developing new practices for producing short-term foresight data on the match between jobs and employees. The Finnish National Agency for Education is responsible for developing the medium-term foresight model and for addressing other foresight needs.
The goal is to make opportunities for continuous learning easily available to everyone. Electronic services are being developed to help users find the information and services they need. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education and Culture are currently implementing a digital service package for continuous learning, which aims to integrate the Job Market Finland service, the Nordic labour market service model the Studyinfo website to better serve jobseekers and other users. The services are being built in stages between 2021 and 2024.
The measures are funded through the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Inquiries:
Teija Felt, Senior Ministerial Adviser, Labour Market, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, tel. +358 295 049080, [email protected]
