General or vocational education provided for adults after initial education and training for professional and/or personal purposes, and which aims to:

• provide general education for adults in topics of particular interest to them (e. g. in open universities);
• provide compensatory learning in basic skills which individuals may not have acquired earlier in their initial education or training (such as literacy, numeracy) and thus to;
• give access to qualifications not gained, for various reasons, in the initial education and training system;
• acquire, improve or update knowledge, skills or competences in a specific field: this is continuing education and training.

SOURCE: Terminology of European education and training policy: a selection of 100 key terms. CEDEFOP, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2008.