Adult education

Adult Education Survey (AES) Purpose and brief description Adult education and training is now considered an important asset to promote economic growth and social (personal) development. In policy circles, this has created the need to collect statistical data on training attended in order to monitor population development (accumulated human capital) and to measure the knowledge, skills and competences acquired. After all, the volume of training activities is considered an important investment to achieve the objectives set by the policy. It must therefore be possible to measure and evaluate the number of training activities attended, thus allowing the policy to be adjusted and adapted efficiently. More specifically, the Adult Education Survey aims to measure the Belgian population's participation in lifelong learning. The aim is to obtain participation rates in all kinds of training: which respondents participate in which type of training. The survey makes a distinction between formal and non-formal education on the one hand and informal learning on the other. The Adult Education Survey was first conducted by Statbel in 2008. It was repeated in 2011, 2016 and 2022. It covers all types of adult education and training activities. This survey is commissioned and subsidised by Eurostat. The aim is to collect information that is comparable in all participating countries: participation rates in training and education broken down by age, gender and type of training, characteristics of the courses taken, etc. Population Individuals aged 18 to 69 since 2022 Data collection method and possible sampling CAWI and CAPI survey Periodicity Every six years since 2022, every five years before. Release calendar Results available 6 months after the reference period Forms Questionnaire 2016 (PDF, 729 Kb) Questionnaire 2022-2023 (PDF, 851 Kb) Definitions Economic activity (NACE-BEL): Official nomenclature with an "X" at the end of the number since the information is only available for 4 positions. Low-skilled people are people who have at most a diploma of lower secondary education. Medium-skilled people are people who obtained a diploma of upper secondary education but not of higher education. Highly-skilled people obtained a diploma of higher education. Manual Eurostat manual Metadata Adult education.pdf Adult Education Survey.pdf