This recently published CEDEFOP Briefing Note highlights the importance of comprehensive and coordinated learning support systems to enable adults to upskill and reskill throughout their working lives. People need to be able to rely on accessible, high-quality and comprehensive support to navigate their learning and working careers in the face of economic and societal challenges, and to find new – even unexpected – opportunities.  Comprehensive learning support systems require secure, stable funding over time, a strong digital infrastructure and a high degree of digital penetration of households, a broad stakeholder consensus, and highly knowledgeable and motivated learning support/guidance staff.

Effective support for individual career development and learning requires stronger system synergies that enable and support closely interlinked guidance services, financial incentives and access to assessment, and validation and recognition procedures. Depending on their resources and systems, governments need to coordinate and interlink policies for employment, career guidance, education and training, and social inclusion.