Individual learning accounts need to be enforceable and adequately funded

CESI has submitted its contribution to the European Commission’s evaluation of individual learning accounts, calling for the gap between the EU framework and its implementation in the Member States to be addressed.

The evaluation concerns the Council Recommendation of 16 June 2022 on individual learning accounts. The Recommendation aims to help all working-age adults access labour-market-relevant training, irrespective of their employment or professional status, and to encourage participation in upskilling and reskilling.

CESI supports this objective, which contributes to the right to education, training and lifelong learning set out in the European Pillar of Social Rights. Evidence from CESI member organisations nevertheless indicates that implementation remains uneven. While many national measures support training, career guidance, skills validation or training leave, they do not necessarily amount to universal, portable and accumulable individual learning entitlements.

Training rights must be additional and usable in practice

CESI supports individual learning accounts where they provide an additional, enforceable and adequately funded route into quality training. They must not replace employers’ responsibility to provide job-related training, collectively agreed training rights, paid training leave or publicly funded education and vocational training.

Where training is linked to a worker’s current job, changes introduced by the employer or mandatory professional requirements, it should take place during paid working time and be financed by the employer. Workers should not bear the cost or loss of income associated with adapting to technological, organisational and environmental change.

More generally, access to paid training leave, income support and, where necessary, support for care responsibilities is needed to make individual entitlements usable in practice. Without such measures, workers on lower incomes and those with caring responsibilities may be unable to take up training even when a formal entitlement exists.

Additional support should be available for groups facing structural barriers to participation. These include workers with low qualifications, temporary and part-time workers, unemployed and inactive people, self-employed and older workers, persons with disabilities, workers in small enterprises, public-service workers and people living in rural or remote areas.

Accessible systems and quality-assured training

According to CESI, the effectiveness of individual learning accounts should be assessed from the learner’s perspective. A system cannot be considered efficient if workers face unclear eligibility rules, fragmented portals, insufficient guidance or difficulties reconciling training with work and care responsibilities.

CESI therefore calls for accessible single portals bringing together information on entitlements, funding, quality-assured training, guidance and validation services. Digital access should be complemented by in-person guidance and non-digital routes, particularly for people with limited digital skills and persons with disabilities.

Training funded through individual learning accounts must meet robust and transparent quality standards. Accounts should be integrated into coherent national lifelong-learning systems and linked to vocational education and training, career guidance, skills forecasting and the validation of non-formal and informal learning. Micro-credentials should contribute to recognised qualifications rather than fragmenting learning pathways or creating a market for short courses of uncertain value.

Trade unions must be involved in governance

CESI stresses that trade unions must participate structurally in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of individual learning accounts. This includes decisions on eligible training, quality standards, priority groups, funding, paid leave and interaction with collective agreements. Consultation only after key design choices have been made is insufficient.

Individual learning accounts must also respect collective bargaining and social-partner autonomy. They should complement sectoral training funds and established public-service training frameworks rather than weakening them.

The European Commission and Member States should establish transparent implementation plans setting out responsibilities, timelines, sustainable funding and measurable targets. Comparable data should be published on the allocation and use of entitlements, completion rates and labour-market outcomes, including differences according to employment status, age, gender, disability, qualification level, sector and territory.

CESI also calls for well-resourced public employment services and education and training institutions. Individual learning accounts must not be used to commercialise training provision or reduce stable public investment in education and vocational training.

CESI’s full consultation contribution is available here.

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