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QUEEN – Quality apprenticeships for evolving labour needs

QUEEN aims to empower youth and adults with quality apprenticeships that adapt to evolving labour markets, fostering inclusive, sustainable career pathways for all.

Apprenticeships are a powerful bridge between education and employment, providing young people with real job opportunities and helping adults upskill or reskill for today’s evolving job market. But how do we ensure these apprenticeships offer real quality and long-term benefits?

In 2018, the European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships (EFQEA) set 14 key criteria to guarantee strong, effective apprenticeship programs. However, putting these criteria into practice isn’t always easy. Different regions have different levels of support, and challenges remain, such as:

✅ Creating clearer, more flexible quality standards.
✅ Strengthening collaboration with social and industry partners.
✅ Encouraging people from all backgrounds and genders to see apprenticeships as a viable career path.

At the same time, apprenticeships must keep up with global trends—like digitalization and sustainable development—to remain relevant in an ever-changing economy.

What is QUEEN?

The QUEEN project is here to make a difference! Our goal is to help young people and adults access better job opportunities by improving apprenticeship policies across Europe. Through collaboration between EU and Candidate countries, we are:

🔎 Defining what makes a Quality Apprenticeship and tracking progress in different regions.
🏆 Highlighting success stories that can inspire and guide policymakers.
🚀 Driving change by designing, implementing, and monitoring better apprenticeship policies.

By working together, we can shape the future of apprenticeships—ensuring they provide real opportunities for individuals and lasting societal benefits. Join us on this journey!

Poster

Objectives

QUEEN is driving policy improvements by expanding the use of apprenticeships, integrating quality-enhancing measures, and strengthening governance at local and regional levels. This leads to a significant impact, with a stronger capacity to implement EFQEA criteria, a positive shift in apprenticeship adoption, and better employment outcomes for individuals across the region.

Outputs

The interregional capacity-building activities aim to create a common understanding among the QUEEN project partners and participating organisations. The overall structure consists of three modules, each containing several learning blocks, and delivered at three different stages of the project activities (semesters 2, 5 and 6).

MODULE 1
The purpose of this module is to create a common understanding of the criteria for Quality Apprenticeship and early project learnings from the QUEEN project. The module is separated into five different Learning Blocks.

• Download here

MODULE 2 

This module will introduce the QUEEN good practices

MODULE 3

This module will introduce designing and achieving policy change, monitoring implementation of policy changes and resources & tools.