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According to the latest UNESCO data (2012) only (95.5%)[1] of the Albanian population (25+) completed primary (ISCED 01) education, leading to roughly 14,000 people potentially illiterate.
The total of unemployed in Albania are 172,700 individuals according to the LFS elaborated by the National Institute of Statistics (NB: the total population is 2.8 million, and the total workforce 1.3 million). In June 2019, a total of 72,700 individuals were registered in the National Employment Services (NES), most of them in the urban areas. Out of these some 1,800 are illiterate (with no educational certificate whatsoever) registered adult (29+) jobseekers; some other 2,450 (29+) only completed primary education (ISCED 01) and additional 3,500 (30-39) completed lower secondary education (ISCED 02) but are reported to lack both professional skills the other soft and technical skills indispensable to obtain a job. In addition, poor primary education provided in some remote areas, does not guarantee learning outcomes, even when a certificate was obtained. These roughly 7,750 vulnerable, low educated registered jobseekers are among the most difficult unemployed to activate, they are currently not supported at all by Active Labour Market Programmes (ALMPs) or targeted services.
The “Supported Continuous Unemployed Learning” (SCUL) project, financed by the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI), implemented jointly by the National Agency for Employment and Skills and UNDP Albania, aims to contribute to the active participation of vulnerable low qualified jobseekers to the society and their transition to the labour market through the provision of quality, flexible, targeted trainings on basic skills. The action is expected to have an impact on the literacy ratio in Albania (95.5% in 2012). The action is fully in line with the National Employment and Skills Strategy (NESS 2019-2022), the long-term programmatic document with which the government of Albania committed with its citizens in promoting sustainable growth through social and economic inclusion.
Currently in Albania very limited targeted support is provided to low skilled unemployed people. The whole intervention is conceived as a capacity development project at the institutional level. Most of the deliverables provided under the project will lead to the establishment of a structure to support this target group. The intervention follows an integrated approach, both in the analysis of target group, its needs (educational and socio-economic) and in the service delivery. The ratio is that employment services complement other social services; the development of specific procedures to support the target group will include references to other social institution in charge of complementary services. This approach is expected to create bridges between different key-actors in the provision of social service, with the long-term ambition of building an integrated case management system.
The ambition of this intervention is to establish a structure and enhance the capacities to address the specific needs of the target group, building on which, hopefully, trigger systemic upskilling mechanisms in the longer term, progressively reducing the size of the group and facilitate its transition towards the labour market. The intervention aims to achieve the following outputs:
Output 1: Vulnerable jobseekers are referred to tailored basic learning provision or other social services
Output 2: Low skilled job seekers benefitted from quality, flexible, targeted trainings on basic skills
Output 3: Training provision is constantly improved based on collected evidence.
The project has started its implementation in 2020. Its second work package (WP2) focused on conducting an in-depth analysis of the target group. Digging into demographic characteristics, social-economic factors, geographical provenience, the need for complementary health care or social services, the analysis helped on identifying specific sub-groups based on criteria other than age and educational attainment. The third work package (WP3) aims at developing a skills assessment methodology and tool based on tested international successful models and conduct it with beneficiaries. As such, the SCUL project is seeking to engage one National Expert to develop key concepts: adult literacy, numeracy and basic digital skills to be further integrated in a skills assessment methodology and tool with the purpose of addressing beneficiaries to targeted trainings, according to the competencies defacto possessed by beneficiaries. The tool will be widely tested at national scale and collected results will be provided in the form of a report, validated during an international conference. This evidence will serve to (i) identify the upskilling learning path most needed by the Albanian population, (ii) establish a skills assessment tool for the Albanian NES to complement the profiling procedures currently in place.
The use of the developed tool in the employment offices will be complemented by individual coaching provided by the NES’ specialists. It will lay the ground for the design and development of tailored curricula (WP 5) and training delivery (WP 6), as well as to improve the services that the Employment Offices (WP 4) will provide to this target group. This will desirably pave the path towards the creation of an adult learning national strategy in the long run.
The national expert will be working in close cooperation with another national expert, the international expert, UNDP and the NAES team, mainly in Tirana, by engaging with the direct beneficiaries in the selected municipalities.
[1] http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx7queryid = 168#