EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 37 - Page 10

EDUCATION MINISTERS FROM 33 DIFFERENT EUROPEAN COUNTRIES together with trade union and employer representatives stressed the importance of vocational education and training (VET) at a meeting in Helsinki last December. ‘We must have a broad skills base to support a society based on competence and innovation’ said the Finnish Minister for Education and Science, ‘we have succeeded well in promoting co-operation in vocational education and training … We are now facing a new stage - putting the process into practice and involving the VET providers and institutions’. The communiqué published at the end of the meeting set a target date of 2010 for such measures as the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) which seeks to improve the comparability of European qualifications and the European credit system for VET (ECVET). Further developments in the already successful Europass system (see issue 26) are also anticipated.
Other priorities were identified including the gathering and better use of statistics, making VET more attractive to young people and being ‘demand-driven’ as new skills are needed by the labour market. All young people should be involved in either further education or VET and the two should be linked so that career progression is possible, into FE if necessary. The communiqué underlines the importance of national governments and calls for them to invest in skills, using EU structural funds if national budgets are strained, link their VET qualifications to the EQF, provide adequate statistics, involve learners in evaluating courses, and report back at EU level as part of the Lisbon process.  VET can also contribute to social cohesion, say the Ministers, by helping those groups who are often excluded from the labour market such as early school leavers and those with low or no qualifications, people with special needs, immigrants and older workers.
The Ministers will meet again in two years time to assess progress.

The Helsinki Communiqué on Enhanced European Cooperation in Vocational Education and Training is available at:

http://www.trainingvillage.gr/etv/upload/etvnews/news/2198-att1-1-helsinkicom_en.pdf