Poland: nine new sectoral skills councils to be set up (in brief)

Poland’s national skills planning council, a body set up to help adapt the country’s skills pool to the needs of its labour market (see article n°10641), announced on 28 June that nine new sectoral skills councils will be created by the end of this year. The councils are set up as part of a call for project proposals procedure (15 proposals are currently being assessed). By the end of 2019, the national skills planning council hopes to launch major studies (human capital assessments) to gauge the skills that are required in these nine sectors, as well as to define their respective short and medium-term challenges. To complement this work, the national council is launching the fifth edition of the ‘employer of tomorrow’ contest, which will reward the best partnership initiatives between companies and the education system. The national council’s primary objective is to formulate guidelines to reform the education system in order to adapt skills to the needs of the labour market, to support work conducted by sector-based skills councils, and to develop continuous training. Seven sectoral skills councils were set up in 2018, in the following sectors: finance, construction, health and social care, tourism, automobile and electromobility, fashion and innovative textiles, and IT.