ABSTRACT
The improvement of the relationship between work, training and education has been central to the recent debates on vocational training in the member states of the European Community. All member states have expressed their willingness to assure for all under-18-year-olds a so-called ‘social guarantee’ which includes either a continuation of full-time education or qualifying training, or a full-time job. The European Social Fund has been revised in 1982 and extended in 1983 in order to make a greater contribution to the training of young people and their social and professional integration, and to improve the access to work for older people through job creation measures combined with retraining and new forms of alternance training. It is fairly certain that the demographic development in Europe leading to a peak of school enrolment at higher secondary and university level, will, between and the end of the 1980s, open up new opportunities for adults.
