Adult education is an educational process throughout a person's life (lifelong learning), which is based on the changing needs to acquire knowledge, skills and experience to increase or change one's qualification or field of occupation in accordance with the requirements of the labor market, one's interests and needs. 

Adult education is not related to a specific age, but to a person's motivation to return to the educational process after completing or interrupting initial education to acquire new or improve existing knowledge, skills and competences (including attitudes) for competitiveness in the labor market and/or self-development. 

Adults can learn in various learning methods that they prefer and that are appropriate to the situation and acquire competences: 

• informal or everyday learning, for example, by attending various events, seminars, learning from colleagues, etc.
• formal education, for example, by obtaining a professional qualification or improving professional competences in professional development education programs for one of the qualifications, studying at a university, etc. 
• in non-formal education, acquiring new competences and improving existing ones according to interests, state or employer demand, for example, by attending language, data analysis, welding, etc. courses. 

Current information about learning opportunities can be obtained on the national skills management platform STARS, which provides residents with unified access to high-quality, and labor market-relevant learning offers, as well as necessary support. 

On the platform, adults can create their own learning account, choose free or co-financed adult education support programs, accumulate previous learning experience and receive other services related to learning activities. 

The goals of adult education policy are:

• to ensure access to lifelong learning for residents regardless of their age, gender, previous education, place of residence, income level, ethnicity, functional disabilities, 
• to create a high-quality educational offer for adults that ensures sustainable competences for work, civic participation, personal growth and promotes the development of a competitive knowledge economy and democratic society based on high skills in Latvia, 
• to establish a coherent system of regulatory enactments and effective resource (including financial) management, observing the principles of shared responsibility and interaction between sectoral policies, for the development of a unified lifelong learning system.