The European Commission proposes new increased targets for learning mobility in higher education and vocational education and training.
Learning mobility funded by Erasmus+ remains one of the most well-known EU achievements. While the Erasmus+ programme provides the financial framework for learning mobility and educational cooperation in the EU and beyond, the policy context and the targets are provided by the European learning mobility framework. The last one dates to 2011 and was entitled ‘Youth on the Move’. Given how the context of learning mobility evolved over the last years with the doubling of the Erasmus+ budget, the rapid digitalisation, and the global challenges of Covid-19, the return of war to Europe, and economic insecurity, it was time for an update. On 15 November 2023, the European Commission (EC) published a draft Council recommendation on learning mobility opportunities for everyone ‘Europe on the Move’. This policy proposal was published together with a package of measures related to fostering skills and talents in Europe to address the labour shortages in Europe. This skills package includes the setting up of a new EU online recruitment platform (‘EU Talent Pool’) and also new measures to make the recognition of qualifications from outside the EU easier.
The new learning mobility framework is a key component of the European Education Area (EEA) and was drafted with inputs from a European citizens panel (see SwissCore article). It provides important updates to the policy context of learning mobility in the EU. One of the main updates compared to 2011 is that the new framework now addresses learners of all age groups and teachers and education staff. This makes the framework now consistent with the Erasmus+ programme which provides opportunities for learners and teachers of all ages, and not only young people. A second major update is that the mobility framework now includes new ways of learning, such as virtual or blended mobility, digital learning tools, but also considers developments such as green travel for learning mobility. The proposed recommendation sets the ambition that learning mobility should become the norm rather than the exception in educational pathways for all education sectors and levels. This should be done by embedding “flexible mobility windows” in all curricula. The 2017 Swiss strategy on exchanges and mobility goes in the same direction and sets the vision that all learners in Switzerland should participate at least once in their lives in a learning mobility.
To make progress towards the EU’s ambition, the new learning mobility framework sets increased mobility targets to be achieved by 2030: i. In higher education, learning mobility for students should be at least 25%, ii. in vocational education and training (VET) learning mobility should at least be 15%, iii. and in all sectors and levels of education, at least 20% of all participants should be people with fewer opportunities. These new proposed targets are significantly higher compared to the current 20% target for higher education (originating from the Bologna process in 2009) and the 8% for VET. A previous target for the inclusion of learners with fewer opportunities does not exist. The proposal also wants to specifically boost mobility of teachers and of VET apprentices (two dedicated strategies are set in the accompanying staff working document, pages 109 and 112 respectively). In order to better monitor the progress, the text calls for a revamping of the European Mobility Scoreboard. Lastly, the framework calls for improved information on learning mobility by putting in place “mobility promoters, coordinators, contact points, ambassadors”, and calls again for “ensuring the full automatic recognition of qualifications and the outcomes of learning periods abroad”.
Learning mobility numbers are increasing in all education sectors, supported by the annually increasing budget for Erasmus+. However, the draft mobility framework does not make any reference to the difficulties of finding sufficient funding to keep the growth going during the next programme generation of Erasmus+ from 2028 onwards. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the current mobility targets will be reached: In higher education the numbers are around 15% and in VET around 5%-7%. In the VET sector this is due to insufficient funding from Erasmus+ according to the staff working document. Swiss higher education mobility numbers are also around 15%.
The draft mobility framework will now be negotiated and is expected to be adopted by the Council of the European Union in May 2024. The aspect of automatic recognition of learning outcomes will separately be addressed with a Commission initiative on quality and recognition to be published in Q2 2024.