European social fund support in the education and employment sectors in Malta, 2014-2020

Abstract

The education and employment sectors are two prominent fields in society. Access to quality education does not only impact the development of an individual but it is also essential for the development of society. Education leads to reduced chances of poverty and contributes to a better quality of life. This sector within society helps in creating more job opportunities since people gain the necessary skills needed for eventual employment. Simultaneously, employment improves the living standards of individuals which contributes to the overall economic growth of a country. Thus, it was only logical to tackle both sectors together. Despite the importance of the education and employment sectors in our daily lives, several challenges are faced in both areas. One of the major concerns in Malta is skills mismatches and the rate of early school leavers. The failure to equip people with the essential set of skills causes a gap between education and the labour market. The ESF is specifically designed to address these challenges as it aims at providing people with the required abilities to enter into the labour market and in the process ease employment challenges. The skills needed for employment can be acquired through the appropriate training designed to address the present gap. The ESF supports such training programmes. As a matter of fact, supporting training and employment across the EU are the core goals of this fund. The priorities of the ESF correspond to overarching policies of the EU such as the Europe 2020 Strategy. Under this strategy, several goals are set to be reached by 2020 in the education and employment sectors. These goals are in accordance with the objectives of the ESF. To ensure that the objectives of this fund are achieved, ex-ante conditionalities were put in place with the aim of guaranteeing that ineffective policies do not jeopardize the effectiveness of EU investment. Consequently, national policy priorities in Malta reflect these EU goals which are targeted through the ESF. The allocation of the ESF to the projects and schemes under the different priority axes contribute to reach the intended outcomes in terms of the common and programme specific indicators which reflect the Europe 2020 strategy goals and the objectives of the OPII in Malta. This research therefore seeks to analyse the support provided to the education and employment sectors in Malta between 2014 and 2020.