Abstract:

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Although the Decree 220/1999, that regulates the adult education in the Valencian Community, takes into account the social and professional integration of learners, in many centers this requirement is neglected because the main objective is usually teaching "traditional" (maths, natural science, ...) subjects.
The presented paper analyzes the needs (personal, academic and labor) of the learners regarding the skills (basic and complementary) and the main academic contents taught nowadays.
This study shows the need for training learners in complementary skills, which is concluded to be performed transversely. This necessity requires greater organization among teachers and further training in this complementary skills. Throughout the 2012/13 academic year the Adult Center Merce Rodoreda detected this need and has been working over this requirement since then.
This paper provides a unique experience about the needs of adults regarding complementary and basic skills.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This paper attempts to provide an overview of adult education for obtaining the secondary education studies from the point of view of recent studies on skills and its relationship with the needs (personal, academic and labor) of learners. In this sense, Goleman(1998) believes that the skills are more important than academic intelligence if the learners want to achieve higher job, personal, academic, and social welfare (Extremera y Fernandez-Berrocal, 2004).

It is introduced the term "complementary skills" as that different from the basic skills (linguistic communication, mathematics, knowledge and interaction with the physical world, digital skills and information processing, social and civic, cultural and artistic competence, learning to learn and personal initiative). Due to the variety of studies conducted and the classifications carried out, there is no globally established classification, so that it becomes necessary to introduce the previous term. If we look at the most important studies developed, the term "complementary skills" would include, between others, the emotional, systemic, interpersonal, generic or transversal, labor, professional competencies.

METHODOLOGY
This paper shows the results of the statistical study performed in May, 2014 among learners who are preparing for obtaining a degree in secondary education in seven different adult training centers in the province of Alicante (Spain). This survey was answered by 250 students, obtaining a confidence level of 95% with a 6% maximum of sampling error.

OBJECTIVES
The study performed has the advantage of allowing the analysis of the skills through the students who have already had a life experience. In this context the aim of the present paper is to exchange experiences and knowledge about secondary education for adults from the point of view of basic and complementary skills, which have a significant bigger impact on student motivation and the results obtained by them.



REFERENCES
Extremera, N., Fernández-Berrocal, P., Mestre, JM and Guil, R. (2004). Outcome Measures of Emotional Intelligence. American Journal of Psychology, 36 (2), pp. 209-228.
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with Emotional Intelligence. Nueva York: Bantam Books. (Trad. Cast. Kairós, 1999)

Keywords:

Job requirements, minimum competencies, adult education, lifelong learning.