CareersNet, Cedefop’s network for lifelong guidance and career development, will convene in Thessaloniki on 7 and 8 June  2018. Around 40 participants will meet, including the core national experts of the network and a selection of recognised European experts on lifelong guidance policy issues. The first day will be dedicated to methodological and strategic issues for the network’s activity. The second day will be dedicated to thematic workshops on pressing issues for the development of effective career development support in Member States.

Issues to discuss include:

• priorities for the network’s activity;
• building the knowledge base on lifelong guidance systems;
• evaluation of national lifelong guidance systems;
• linking system development with national and EU policy priorities;
• putting guidance in context – learning, enterprises and communities.

For further information, please click on the following: CareersNet meeting

Setting up the infrastructure for EU system

Cedefop is setting up a pan-European system for gathering and analysing information from online vacancies across all EU countries. To ensure the highest possible quality of the system, Cedefop is bringing together members of the ESSNet, representatives from Eurostat, the European Commission and independent researchers to discuss and fine-tune the methodology as well as various algorithms and rules for extracting vacancies and classifying the information they contain.

The workshop will provide a platform for presenting and discussing the proposed methodology as well as for sharing the experience and knowledge of various experts in the meeting with the aim to fine-tune various algorithms and arbitrary set rules, related to:

• data ingestion (web scraping, crawling, APIs download);
• extraction, de-duplication and expansion of vacancies;
• classifications of occupations;
• extraction of skills.

The ultimate objective of the workshop is to find a joint agreement on the methodology, including the various algorithms and rules for extracting vacancies and classifying the information obtained.

This event is restricted to the invited participants.

For more information about the event, click here.

The 2017 WorldSkills competition took place in Abu Dhabi (15 to 19 October) with 59 national teams competing in 51 skills areas, spanning from cooking to mechatronics and bricklaying.

For the first time, a separate conference was linked to the main skills competition. The idea was to gather organisations working in skills and create a platform for international dialogue. Cedefop, together with the European Commission and the European Training Foundation (ETF), contributed to the conference actively, organising three thematic sessions on the topic of ‘Skills and careers without borders’.

Read more: Promoting skills and careers without borders – WorldSkills conference

The 15th ReferNet annual Plenary meeting will welcome the 30 partners under the 2016-19 Framework Partnership Agreement, as well as the National representatives for ReferNet.

The meeting will aim at informing on the latest EU VET policy developments, preparing the 2018 Work plan and sharing experience on the scope and process of validation. VET policy reporting, VET in Europe country reports, the opinion survey on VET in the member States, VET terminology, optimising the dissemination of VET-related information and several other topics will feature on the agenda. Various cooperation models such as knowledge-sharing on EU VET policies, peer review, hands-on workshops and joint reflection will be used.

The annual meeting also offers a space for opening new channels of cooperation and communication between partners.

Take part in the discussion #refernet

The event is part of the European vocational skills week 2017 of which Cedefop is a partner. #EUVocationalSkills

For further information, please click on the following: ReferNet annual Plenary meeting 2017