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An increased focus on low skilled workers is the most obvious trend in Danish adult education. The institutions are also going through turmoil of mergers and high expectations of new ways of cooperation. At the same time still more funding is earmarked for short term projects.
By Michael Voss (InfoNet)
135.000 Danes will not be able to get a job in 2015, because they lack the necessary skills. At the same time employers will have trouble getting skilled workers for about the same number of jobs. (For comparison: In Denmark there are 3.5 million people between 18 and 67).
Over the last years the government and the parliament have made a series of decisions to boost adult education for low-skilled workers. For 2008 alone state funded expenses for adult education have been increased by 135 million euro.
Guidance Networks
Decision makers have also realized that it is necessary to make a serious effort on motivating and recruiting especially low-skilled workers to adult education. Until now it has been too difficult for low-skilled workers and for employers of SME’s to get an overview of the possibilities of adult education, and counseling and guidance has not been performed good enough.
To improve this work 22 Adult Guidance Networks are now being established.
“The government wants the institutions to network and collaborate much closer “Counseling taking place in one institution must direct the individual to another institution, when that is the most relevant. A counselor at a Labour Market Training Center must have the knowledge to be able to guide an applicant to one of the more general Adult Education Centers, if that is what is needed.
It seems obvious, but it has not always been the case,” Agnethe Nordentoft explains. She is a development officer at Danish Adult Educational Association. She says:
Knowledge Centers
Agnethe Nordentoft is also a consultant at the newly established Knowledge Center for Validation of Prior Learning, one of a series of Knowledge Centers that are being established with a wide range of educational institutions as partners.
“These centers are another way of motivating the actors to collaborate, and they are examples of the kind of relatively loose networks that are the organizational trend today,” says Agnethe Nordentoft.
The goal of the Knowledge Centers is to collect experiences and best practices. On this basis they will develop new knowledge, disseminate it and offer advice for authorities and institutions.
A wave of mergers
“Enhanced collaboration between the actors certainly has the potential of making adult education more available and more suited to the needs. But these recent developments are not without problems,” says Agnethe Nordentoft.
“Ten years ago technical schools and business schools began merging into vocational school centers and some of these also include labour market training centers. Now they are encouraged to expand even more and include diploma courses and becoming vocational and business academies.
One wave of mergers is not in place before a new wave is being introduced.
The same is happening for the institutions offering medium length further education. Before one phase of mergers was completed, a new law stipulated that all professional schools should merge into huge University Colleges.
Along this process they have had to establish Knowledge Centers and in some instances also participate in Guidance Networks. From this turmoil follow organizational problems, and the price of organizational problems is often paid by an immediate drop in competence level and less efficiency in the actual work of education.”
Dynamic or …?
Part of this trend is the ever increasing number of short-termed projects. The Knowledge Centers are examples of that. At the end of a three year period it will be decided if some of them are going permanent on the basis of an evaluation.
“It may create a new dynamic, when you base research and development on a defined need and then close it down if there is no further need for it - instead of creating perpetual motion machines.
On the hand this method does not take into account that research and development in such complex matters takes time. Hiring staff makes up for the first 3-4 months. Then you must development work plans and establish a division of labour before really getting started. And about two and half years into the period you must start evaluating the results.
This is not much for a brand new project to get results and develop its potentials,” says Agnethe Nordentoft.
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April 2008
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