Youth unemployment and skills shortages are major challenges in Europe, highlighting the struggle of young people to transition from education to work. Initiatives like StartNet aim to bridge the gap between education and employment, emphasising the need for quality education, partnerships, and investment to empower young people for their future.
Youth unemployment in Europe is more than twice as high as for other age groups (14.9% vs. 6% Eurostat 1/2024), while skills shortages and mismatches are rapidly increasing. This paradox reveals the difficulty of young people to transition from education to work.
Young people’s labour market integration is a decisive moment for their educational and vocational pathways as well as a weak spot of education and training systems. Still too many pupils and students drop-out, lack orientation and remain not in education employment or training (NEET), with dramatic consequences for their future careers and lives. Moreover, skilled talents are crucial for European economies, to be innovative and able to master the green and digital transition.
Being aware of this key issue, EU institutions have kept the topic on the forefront of the agenda (European Year of Youth 2022, European Year of Skills, reinforced Youth Guarantee, EU Skills Agenda and Action Plan, European Social Pillar with its Principle 1 on Education, training and life-long learning). However, progress and impact on the ground have not been sufficient to narrow the gap between the worlds of education and work.
The experience within the StartNet-Project shows the direction in which change could be delivered most effectively.
Building bridges between education and work, Member States, policy and practice
Since 2017, StartNet – network transition education to work, a project of the Goethe-Institut and Stiftung Mercator, is building bridges from school-to-work. It is about gathering all relevant stakeholder for a collective, systemic and sustainable impact. It is about creating an educational eco-system, chains of action across age groups that provide continuous orientation and empowerment, leaving no-one behind. It is about quality education, training, internships and apprenticeship delivering the skills for the future through partnerships between education, research and employment. StartNet delivers such impact locally through pilot actions in southern Italy and with its 18 partners from 12 countries, providing learning mobility and expert exchanges, building bridges and European partnerships across borders. For the positive change to become systemic, StartNet also builds bridges between policy and practice to enhance regulatory frameworks, programmes and curricula.
“Building bridges“ is also the title of its High-level Online-Conference with the European Policy Centre and Connecting Europe on 7 May, discussing learnings, challenges and objectives for young people’s transition to work at the conclusion of the European Year of Skills and ahead of the European elections.
What’s after the European elections?
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do” famously stated Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years. And his quote could still perfectly work as a call for action to design education for the future. The Goethe-Institut has a longtime experience in connecting stakeholders from civil society, culture and education, in delivering language and intercultural skills that are so important for the European educational landscape.
A coordinated European effort to increase investments and partnerships in science, research, education and training has the potential to turn the tide. Decreasing youth unemployment and skills shortages, while strenghtening innovative economies and progressive societies.
In a few weeks, many young people will be able to vote at the European elections for the first time, an increasing number from the age of 16. They have the key to their future, and they are the key to the future of Europe.
Quality education and training considers young people not only as target group but as equal partners. StartNet Youth was born to build a forum to make young people’s voices heard, regarding their education and transition to work. The energy of empowered young people is vital for European democracy and its economy. It is the source of inspiration that boosts the educational system from parents and teacher to politicians and experts. It could guide us, in times when attitudes and skills become more important than factual knowledge, when education is falling behind technological progress, to reimagine, apply and do.
