Hard on the heels of Davos, where the “skills gap” was the subject of several sessions, the European summit on Monday showed that high unemployment is concentrating EU leaders’ minds on improving training for young people – the focus of our forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report.
Youth unemployment, which is high right across Europe, last week in Spain reached 51.4% among those aged 16 to 24. In Greece the figure is 46.6% and in Portugal it is 30.7%.
While the eurozone crisis dominated headlines about the EU summit, leaders made a point of identifying the “skills mismatch” as one of their top priorities as they battle youth unemployment.
At the same time, Germany’s success in using apprenticeships and other vocational training to boost workers’ skills and economic growth – and lower unemployment – is receiving increasing attention from elsewhere in Europe.
In their statement after the summit, EU leaders listed “Stimulating employment, especially for young people” as their no. 1 priority, underlining that “This means taking concrete actions to overcome ‘the skills mismatch’.” Member states “need to develop and implement comprehensive initiatives on employment, education and skills,” the statement added.
At the national level, the EU leaders said, “the objective should be that within a few months of leaving school, young people receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship, or a traineeship.” They also called for “increasing substantially the number of apprenticeships and traineeships” and “making renewed efforts to get early school-leavers into training” – the last point addressing a key focus of the 2012 Global Monitoring Report, which will examine skills strategies aimed at marginalized youth.
The emphasis on traineeships and apprenticeships demonstrates the increasing influence of Germany’s training model, which President Nicolas Sarkozy of France lauded in a televised interview on Sunday evening, in which he outlined measures to increase the proportion of apprentices that French employers are obliged to hire.
Some are recommending that Britain, too, look to the German model. Last week two commentators on British-German ties, David Marsh and Robert Bischof, commented in The Guardian that Britain’s labour market had performed poorly in comparison to Germany’s “modern apprenticeship systems built on a long-term compact between labour and employers.” The authors praise “a strikingly different cultural approach to industrial training,” that takes “a generational approach to assembling skills and technology.”
In the 2012 GMR, we’ll look both at whether the German model is working as well as some claim, and – crucially – consider the question of whether it can work outside Germany. In a future blog post, we plan to outline the key features of the German system, and how it differs from training in other countries.
Photo: Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Danish prime minister; Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council; and Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, at the EU summit in Brussels on Monday. (© Council of the European Union)
Since when is the common skills mismatch being solved by sticking kids in an even higher level of mismatching called apprenticeship and traineeship which are offered by our industries and state? Of course the (German) companies where the apprentices and trainees work almost for free enjoy those programs immensely! Three years working fulltime in order to be a trained Bread-Seller etc.- Which individual skills are matched there?
Our school-system has to be changed to that, that no more state-CONFORM teachers can DEFORM children since early childhood and even getting payed well for that with tax-money:
Because they are already themselves DEFORMED after having finally reached the teachers state helping only state politics and industry interests, not our children. They were themselves being cut off their own individualtity, feelings and creativity after 25yrs of “BILDUNG” (FORMING) through carrots and sticks methods. How can it be otherwise?
We have to decide if we still want to turn our eyes blind to the real meaning of education (in the literal meaning!!!) we want for our children (= future):
Do we really want to go on (DE)FORMING children from outside like in most, especially German education (called “Bildungs” = “FORMING”) systems? And keep on still overlooking the real meaning of EDUCATION (lat. educare: to bring up/out) – meaning sth which is already inside and supporting – not oppressing children expressing their own individual unique ideas, feelings, creativity and talents to the world.
Why don’t we devote ourselves to the RICH FUTURE of diversity, feelings, new ideas, “otherness”, being special and colourful
instead of
POOR FUTURE = CONFORMITY, sameness, being afraid of punishment and dehumiliation so suppressing unique talents, while being naturally unique and different.
Or are governments like Germany still afraid, not to have enough J.O.B. (just over broke) people who pay their well paid paper shuffling bureaucrats and other unnecessary spendings like military?
Do we devote ourselves to measly selfsupporting resource wasting state conformity and bureaucracy forming their system supporters or do we finally devote ourselves to educating creative lives, diverse future worlds and freedom?
Totally agree. Skill mismatch can be easily overcome with trainings. If the candidate has good grasping power,he can learn any skill.
I also agree that skills mismatch can be overcome with training, but also advocate for apprenticeships in school. We are experiencing similar problems in the US in regard to higher education graduates, riddled with debt from higher education costs, not finding jobs. These include teachers, lawyers, and business professionals with advanced degrees. Is the EU experiencing similar unemployment in their higher education graduates?
i wish for solution on skill mismarch