A new transnational study from the SHE-LEARNS project finds that single mothers in Slovenia, Belgium, Cyprus and Romania face the same configuration of barriers to adult education regardless of how robust their national support systems are. The implication for policymakers is uncomfortable: opportunity alone is not enough.
In Europe, roughly 85% of single parents are women. They are consistently overrepresented in poverty statistics, underrepresented in adult learning statistics, and routinely told that the programmes meant to help them are “available.”
The new SHE-LEARNS Transnational Report on the Existing State (March 2026), based on desk research, focus groups, and structured questionnaires across Slovenia, Belgium, Cyprus, and Romania, shows why that promise so often fails to translate into reality.
The headline finding is striking: the welfare model barely matters.
A pattern that does not respect borders
Slovenia operates a comparatively strong universal welfare system. Belgium combines generous social transfers with a complex, multi-level support architecture. Cyprus has tighter public spending and limited structural support. Romania’s welfare capacity is the weakest of the four.
These differences are real and consequential. Child poverty risk ranges from 11.8% in Slovenia and 14.8% in Cyprus to 33.8% in Romania. Adult learning participation runs from under 10% in Romania to around 30% in Belgium.
And yet, and this is the report’s central contribution, the lived experience of single mothers across all four countries converges on the same five constraints:
- time poverty and cognitive overload;
- financial precarity, even when employed;
- childcare that is unavailable, unaffordable, or incompatible with learning schedules;
- adult education systems designed for “ideal learners” with stable lives;
- emotional and psychological burden is rarely acknowledged in policy.
The report calls this configuration “bounded agency” formal rights and opportunities exist, but real choices are severely constrained by structural, economic, and social pressures (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009).
“Time flexibility is not an added value. It is a precondition for participation.”
This sentence, drawn from focus group findings, captures the heart of the report. Across all four countries, single mothers do not report lacking motivation. They do not say they lack interest. They do not say they cannot see the value of learning.
What they say, repeatedly and across very different national contexts, is that the conditions under which learning is offered make participation impossible.
A working mother in Belgium described how cumulative indirect costs (childcare, transport, materials) make even nominally “free” courses unaffordable. Cypriot participants emphasised that exhaustion and emotional load reduce the amount of time available for use. Romanian focus group participants described full-day weekend training blocks scheduled from 9 am to 6pm as effectively unattainable, while the same hours split across multiple shorter sessions would be feasible.
The conclusion is the same everywhere: non-participation is rational, not motivational.
Four countries, four faces of the same problem
The report identifies a distinct “exclusion profile” for each country:
- Slovenia illustrates a “hidden exclusion dynamic” – participation is theoretically accessible but practically unsustainable. Programmes assume an “ideal learner,” and any disruption (a sick child, a schedule change) leads to dropout. The issue is not entry, but retention.
- Belgium shows a “fragmentation effect” – support exists but is unevenly distributed across regions, languages, and institutions. Participation depends on the ability to navigate complex systems. Recognition of prior learning emerges as a particularly acute gap.
- Cyprus presents a compounded constraint environment – multiple barriers converge simultaneously, with emotional and cognitive overload acting as a primary limiter alongside logistical constraints.
- Romania reflects a “survival-driven participation model” – economic precarity dominates, and learning competes directly with immediate household needs. Romanian respondents place an unusually strong emphasis on whether training leads to tangible employment outcomes.
These differences matter for design. A model that works in Slovenia, where the system is strong but rigid, will need different emphases in Romania, where survival logic dominates.
What the evidence says about solutions
Despite the contextual variations, the report shows remarkable convergence on what single mothers and adult educators across all four countries say would actually work. Four pillars come up consistently:
- Flexible learning formats – modular, hybrid, self-paced, redesigned so learning can adapt to participants rather than the other way round.
- Embedded childcare – not as a complementary service but as core infrastructure, built into the design of training rather than added on.
- Financial protection – fee waivers, stipends, benefit compatibility, and protection from the “welfare trap” where participating in training reduces overall household income.
- Continuous guidance and psychosocial support – mentoring, peer support, administrative navigation, and trauma-informed approaches treated as part of delivery, not as optional extras.
The report calls this “integrated intervention logic.” None of the four pillars works on its own. Skills training without childcare is inaccessible. Financial support without flexibility is wasted. Flexibility that lacks employment relevance in countries like Romania fails to motivate participation.
Beyond the project: a wider European question
The SHE-LEARNS project, funded under Erasmus+ and coordinated across Slovenia, Belgium, Cyprus, and Romania, positions its forthcoming pilot interventions as a demonstration model: an evidence-based test of what happens when participation is designed around real-life conditions rather than institutional convenience.
But the implications run wider. The European Pillar of Social Rights, the lifelong learning agenda, and the Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness all rest on the assumption that expanding opportunity leads to expanded participation. The SHE-LEARNS evidence directly challenges that assumption. For high-burden groups, opportunity is necessary but nowhere near sufficient.
The report’s final insight is sharper than any individual recommendation:
Inclusion cannot be achieved through access alone. It requires aligning systems with the realities of those they aim to serve.
For Europe’s roughly six million single-parent households with dependent children, overwhelmingly headed by women, that alignment is overdue.