Modern societies and labour markets are characterized by increasing demands, so basic education is becoming increasingly important in the context of Lifelong Learning. Without basic education, many people are excluded from social participation. Lifelong Learning is based on adequate basic education, but insufficient basic education reduces the chances on the labour market and as a result fewer opportunities for learning and acquisition of skills. Lifelong Learning is necessary to ensure that Europe stays competitive and sustainable, and social participation for all people is possible. In the process of learning, low-skilled people with insufficient basic education have usually lots of problems: Over the years, the situation of defeats and exclusion from social participation and acquisition of skills, becomes more and more difficult. As a result, a vicious circle of mutually conditional and mutually exacerbating factors arises. Often the target group can’t be achieved with intense training of basic education, because the benefits and the needed time seems neither attractive nor plausible. To get successful in this learning process seems to be too abstract and not achievable. The Quicksteps project aims to enable low-skilled adults to run the process of Lifelong Learning, to stay successful in the labour market and participate in society. Relevant key skills and basic education are taught and so workforce is developed for the labour market. Quicksteps offers effective and learner-centered basic education trainings in small units, based on individual needs and requirements of low-skilled people. These innovative training-units can solve problems that are caused by inadequate basic education relating to the requirements of daily life situations and the workplace or the managing-process of administrative, educational-related or family matters. Quicksteps shall provide a better coping with everyday situations (marriage, child enrollment, registration of residence, divorce, illness, banking, etc.). By the trainings “snips, learning to go, quick hits”, knowledge and success can be achieved very fast. Therefore Quicksteps is an incentive to take part in the process of Lifelong Learning. The advertisement to recruit the learners should be just auditive or visual, to avoid the situation, that the learners can’t read and understand the written missions. In order to this, intrinsic motivation can be seeded and the first step to win the target group is done. Quicksteps also supports the learners to do the next steps in the Lifelong Learning process. Quicksteps shall be realized in two phases: First we want to do exchange of experiences and good practice to develop the innovative learning program and to adapt it to the special requirements of the countries. In the following phase, Quicksteps is offered to the learners and the transfer to other European countries will be developed and organized.
So far, basic education projects have been mainly focused on employed low-skilled people. With Quicksteps, we wanted to expand this radius decisively, not only to the target group of unemployed, low-qualified people, but to all adults with basic skills needs in order to enable them to participate in Lifelong Learning and the labor market. Increasing demands characterize society and the working world and ensure a growing importance of basic education; without sufficient basic education, many people are excluded from social participation. With intensive basic training courses, this target group can often not be reached at first, as the benefits and the planned time spent on the target group are neither attractive nor plausible. Content is perceived as being too abstract and too detached from one's own situation; successes can only be achieved and planned in the long term (if at all). Moreover, there is often a barrier to participate in formal learning settings. With this first phase of the project Quicksteps, a foundation for the actually following application and implementation phase was developed: through the exchange of experiences, together we developed approaches and conceptual foundations. Quicksteps stands for effective, small-scale and learner-centered basic education units. Small learning units (SLUs) should be offered in a perspective, which take into account the individual needs and the concrete living and working situation, and thus give an incentive to use them (quick hits), and so to encourage further education processes; this can be linked to existing basic training programs. The project consortium consisted of three partners: Stiftung Berufliche Bildung (SBB), Hamburg / Germany; Euroform RFS, Rende and Turin / Italy; Inspire, Graz / Austria. Since 1982, SBB has successfully implemented the parliamentary mandate to enable disadvantaged people to enter the labor market through the provision of suitable educational services, thereby enabling social participation. With its subsidiaries in Hamburg, it is one of the largest providers of professional qualification training courses. Representatives of the most important employers' associations and chambers are members of the Board of Trustees and incorporate the topic of basic education and the project results into their associations. Inspire is an independent organization based in Graz/ Austria, founded in 2009. Inspire designs education and management processes interdisciplinarily, interculturally and focuses on the principle of dialogue. The inspire association implements projects: In addition to EU-funded projects, it is mainly networking and strategy projects; among others, for the Austrian federal ministries and the state government, e.g. the "Basic education network". Euroform RFS is a vocational training institution established in 1996, which is active in the field of vocational education and guidance, and organizes training courses in various fields, e.g. Italian language courses for foreigners, etc. Euroform RFS brings together vocational training experts in a wide range of topics, including thematic references to the analysis and comparison of the different European education systems. Numerous mobility projects have already been carried out, enabling trainees and students to do internships in Italian companies. The transnational meetings were primarily used to exchange experiences, to promote knowledge transfer into existing networks and to develop a conceptual basis for the Quicksteps project. The results have been worked out and are available for further use on the project website. These are in particular: SLU definition, SLU categories, the 5-step model and examples for the design of SLUs. The transfer of knowledge into our networks has been maintained, whether locally through information dissemination and discussion attended events or as a special point during our project meetings. Among others, there was e.g. in Graz a colleague of the educational institution atempo, who brought his positive experiences with regard to the use of digital media in the classroom with persons with disabilities, or we organized on-site excursions, e.g. in Hamburg, the visit of the educational institution Jugend in Arbeit (see also the meeting report on the project website). The SLU concept is valuable for all partners involved, and we expect that in our future work, there will be good connection points for the future use in various learning contexts.