Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa
Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa
Working and ageing - Cedefop - Europa
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<strong>Working</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>ageing</strong><br />
Guidance <strong>and</strong> counselling for mature learners<br />
competitiveness <strong>and</strong> social welfare of the country depend, to a great extent,<br />
on ability to tackle this structural weakness effectively.<br />
However, despite the extent of this problem, for many years adult education<br />
policies did not face it systematically. Between 1974 – the year when half a<br />
century of dictatorship ended – <strong>and</strong> the 1990s, public policies for adult<br />
education were still characterised by:<br />
(a) a compensatory approach, namely second-chance education that<br />
repeated the curricula <strong>and</strong> methods of formal education;<br />
(b) occasional, intermittent policies or measures;<br />
(c) a lack of official expertise <strong>and</strong> financial investment (Freitas, 2009;<br />
Guimarães, 2009).<br />
From the mid-1990s, public policies on adult education opened up to<br />
modern trends <strong>and</strong> approaches, <strong>and</strong> embraced the importance of adult<br />
education as a contributing factor to social <strong>and</strong> economic modernisation <strong>and</strong><br />
development (Freitas, 2009). On the other h<strong>and</strong>, some lessons were learned<br />
from the past. A case in point was the method used in experimental adult<br />
education courses, designed by non-profit local organisations after the<br />
democratic revolution of 1974, based on prior knowledge <strong>and</strong> experiences of<br />
low-skilled adults (Guimarães, 2009). In the late 1990s, public policies began<br />
to implement a national system of recognition <strong>and</strong> validation of competences<br />
in partnership with these local organisations. The qualification pathway was<br />
based both on the adultʼs experience <strong>and</strong> development of skills needed in a<br />
more dem<strong>and</strong>ing <strong>and</strong> changing labour market, thus contributing to<br />
modernisation of the country.<br />
In 2005, the recognition, validation <strong>and</strong> certification of competences (RVCC)<br />
system became a key element of the new opportunities initiative – a<br />
government programme aiming to adopt a massive <strong>and</strong> assertive adult<br />
education policy to address, as effectively <strong>and</strong> systematically as possible,<br />
serious low qualification levels in Portuguese society.<br />
12.2. The new opportunities initiative <strong>and</strong> the<br />
national qualifications system<br />
The new opportunities initiative ( 43 ) is a governmental programme launched<br />
jointly by the Ministry of Labour <strong>and</strong> Social Solidarity <strong>and</strong> the Ministry of<br />
Education. It is a clear political commitment in budgetary, institutional,<br />
( 43 ) http://www.novasoportunidades.gov.pt.