DISSEMINATION EVENT: “MONITORING AND EVALUATING WORK-BASED LEARNING”

On 9 and 10 June, 2022, the European Training Foundation (ETF) and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training of Germany (BIBB) organised a workshop to present the new ETF Handbook for “Monitoring and Evaluating work-based learning in VET”. Around 20 participants from 10 ETF Partner countries - Albania, Algeria, Georgia, Israel, Lebanon, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey - took part in the workshop in Bonn, Germany.

The authors of the Handbook, Philipp Grollmann from BiBB, Stefan Thomas from the ETF and Wolfgang Wittig from the f-bb Research Institute presented the main results of the Handbook, using the IPOO model. “Unpacking the IPOO model has been an interesting challenge for our participants” says Floriana Folisi, ETF, “IPOO stands for Inputs, Processes, Outputs and Outcomes and it has been an excellent opportunity to discuss indicators and tools for each of these dimensions with our partner countries”.

In several workshops, various options for setting up monitoring and evaluation schemes as well as examples of relevant indicators and tools from several countries around the globe were presented. For instance, participants discussed about how to measure the costs and benefits of work-based learning. “If you want to have an attractive VET system then you need to be aware of the strengths and weakness and make visible those aspects to learners and companies”, said Philipp Grollmann, BIBB. Other workshops were dedicated to the monitoring of the participation of companies and students, dropping out from work-based learning and labour market outcomes. “To assess the effectiveness of work-based learning, policy makers need reliable data on the graduates’ success in the labour market as well as on their access to further learning and professional development”, Wolfgang Wittig, f-bb, pointed out.

“Monitoring and evaluating work-based learning, and in particular apprenticeship, is different from monitoring and evaluating school-based VET”, concluded Stefan Thomas, ETF, and added that “by presenting concrete examples of good practice from various countries, we would like to give practical advice and guidance.”