PILOTING: EARLALL and EAEA host REGALE Pilot Focus Group on Capacity Building in ALE
Written by Charlotte Ede, EARLALL.
On 20 April, the European Association of the Education of Adults (EAEA) and the European Association of Regional and Local Authorities for Lifelong Learning (EARLALL) hosted a focus group on ALE policy among regional and adult education stakeholders in Brussels.
As part of their work in the Erasmus+ REGALE – Regional Capacity for Adult Learning and Education – project, EAEA and EARLALL hosted a focus group of regional, ALE and European policy-maker representatives who are interested in developing the capacity of regions in adult learning and
education. The focus groups come off the back of the publication of REGALE country reports: ‘Adult Learning Policies in Europe: An Insight of Regional and Local Stakeholders’.
The report highlights that while local and territorial networks are the solutions to the lack of overarching adult learning systems, in Europe, public policy pays very little attention to the quality of adult learning provisions. With this in mind, participants were asked to share their input that will help shape the policy roadmap that the project is developing to fill this gap.
Gina Ebner, EAEA Secretary General welcomed the group to the REGALE project, indicating the strong results of the project with excellent cooperation links and fruitful study exchanges that inspired partners. Then Laurin Reding, European Advisor For Education at SwissCore introduced SwissCore as the liaison office for the adult education sector in Brussels, with a strong focus on collaboration on education across European actors. He highlighted the importance of cooperation between SwissCore and Movetia (an EARLALL Associate Member) and SVEB (a board member of EAEA) and welcomed the group to the premises.
After the presentations of the REGALE project, the participants were welcomed to preview the draft policy recommendations on Regional Capacity Building in Adult Education. Participants strongly agreed with some of the recommendations, including the importance of giving new impetus to the existing European programs for Adult Learning. They also indicated areas of improvement to the policy recommendations, such as including Individual Learning Accounts and Micro-Credentials as specific and flexible tools that should be adopted at the local level.
EAEA and EARLALL took note of the discussions and will use the results to feed into fine-tuning the recommendations. These will then contribute to the policy roadmap, outlining specific tools for developing capacity at the local level, across Europe.
You can view the current range of resources on www.regalenetwork.eu including:
– A repository of best practices
– Capacity-building webinars
– The Report and report summaries on the challenges and opportunities of ALE capacity-building in the project partners’ countries.
