Independent national experts network in the area of adult education/adult skills : full country report : Estonia

Estonia has performed well in reaching its employment targets for 2020, although raising women's employment towards the target still needs attention. Despite this, Estonia's performance lags behind in adult learning targets as participation in learning has stood still during 2011-2015 while some improvements are monitored in 2016. Most of the key reforms affecting adult education have been implemented in previous years, and thus, 2017 has mostly been about implementation of the adult education programme 2017-2020. Nevertheless, there are several areas where improvements have not been as rapid as expected which makes it difficult to achieve the targets set for 2020. The key challenges for Estonia lie in improving the knowledge base on what works in adult education. In order to improve achievements in adult education fields, it will be important to understand what has been working among the measures implemented so far and where the areas of improvement are. It is particularly important to identify the specific target groups for adult learning policies and make efforts to reach these target groups to involve them in adult learning policies.