LEAP Project Releases Innovative “How-To” Guide for Local Policymakers on Adult Education Policy Development

The LEAP project, co-funded by Erasmus Plus, brings together a partnership of seven organizations from six European countries, including Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain. Its overarching goal is to promote adult education and learning across local, national, and EU levels by engaging local decision-makers and technical staff of local authorities. Recognizing the gap between macro and micro-level policies, the project seeks to bridge this divide by increasing awareness of the importance of adult education among local authorities. To achieve this aim, the project collaborates with stakeholders such as education providers, learning centres, cultural centres, and civil society, thereby enhancing policy effectiveness and improving adult education opportunities for the wider community.

The project releases a new intellectual output aimed at helping policymakers develop local policy on adult education. The IO4, titled “How to” Guide for local policymakers, includes two elements: a guide that features templates to promote the uptake of project results and deliverables, and lessons that have been piloted and tested to create actual policy documents on adult education at the local level.

The guide provides step-by-step guidance on producing a simple policy document, including data collection, identification of local players, analysis of training needs, promotion of adult learning, setting quality standards, and identifying financial resources. It also outlines operational lessons that have been learned from the project’s implementation and deployment.

The LEAP project aims to enhance policy effectiveness and increase adult participation in formal, non-formal, and informal learning on local, national, and EU levels by directly engaging local decision-makers and technical staff of local authorities. The project also collaborates with stakeholders such as education providers, learning centres, cultural centres, and civil society.

IO4 informs policymakers and stakeholders on the dynamics of concrete adult education solutions and actions in political terms. It translates the experience and results of the project as elements for “policy and practice”, empowering and equipping stakeholders and policymakers to plan and deliver capacity building initiatives and shape policies informed by project results. This intellectual output is highly innovative, producing impact at the systemic level in the domain of adult education and local policymaking. It mainstreams LEAP outside the partnership and after project completion, strengthening the relevance of policymaking at the local level in the policy domains of lifelong learning, adult education, and socio-economic policies.

The LEAP project’s “How to” Guide is instrumental in promoting the transferability and adaptability of project results to other areas. The Guide is available in six languages, in open access and free versions, and advances policy dialogue by defining links between the worlds of education and training and the world of adult education policies at the local and regional levels.

More info about IO4 “How to”: https://leap2local.eu/ELEARNING/EN/Interactive_EN/Guide

For further information on LEAP, please visit the project website: www.leap2local.eu