Day one of the ETF Network for Excellence (ENE)’s third conference entitled, Centres of Vocational Excellence as Engines for Vocational Education and Training Development: Let’s Excel Together without Borders, kicked off on the morning of Wednesday, 29 November 2022 with opening remarks by ETF’s Director ad Interim, Xavier Matheu de Cortada.
Over 100 educational specialists tuned in from the Philippines to Pakistan as well as EU member states and ETF partner countries to discuss the latest developments in and results of ENE. The two-day event highlighted ENE’s achievements from 2021 and 2022 including the project’s ongoing efforts to strengthen international cooperation in VET.
Mr Matheu de Cortada described the event as a “milestone in the process of supporting VET” to improve vocational education and training’s status and attractiveness within a lifelong learning perspective. He pointed out how ENE supports its members and enables them to contribute to socioeconomic development by identifying the right skills for labour market needs while encouraging inclusivity and employability in learning ecosystems through strategic partnerships.
In the keynote address, Dr. Recep Altin, from Directorate of Vocational and Technical Education, Ministry of National Education- Republic of Türkiye, underscored the significance of partnerships in his country by drawing attention to the role CoVEs play in his country where efforts are currently underway to raise VET’s profile by strengthening ties with industry and the higher education system.
Since one of the conference’s objectives for the first day was to frame the discussion around ENE’s self-assessment tool (ENESAT), the ETF’s Julian Stanley and Doriana Monteleone provided an overview of how CoVEs can use the tool to evaluate their progress in the ten themes ENE covers:
- Lifelong learning and vocational excellence
- Education-business cooperation (e.g., work-based learning, public-private partnerships)
- Pedagogy and professional development
- Entrepreneurial dimension of vocational excellence
- Industry 4.0/5.0 and digitalisation
- Autonomy and institutional development (financing, leadership, governance)
- Going green – supporting sustainable goals
- Smart specialisation – mobilising innovation, ecosystems, and SMEs
- Excellence in social inclusion and equity
- Career guidance and vocational excellence
Mr Stanley stressed the difference between being an excellent skills provider and a Centre of vocational excellence. To become the latter, a paradigmatic shift needs to take place. The ENESAT tool can help “move centres from being excellent providers of skills to being centres of vocational excellence”. One-hundred-and-fifty indicators over ten dimensions have been developed and are being tested. Self-assessment helps CoVEs identify areas for improvement across the different dimensions. This knowledge informs their strategy and contributes to making CoVEs regional leaders and collaborative hubs where peer learning can take place.
Indeed, CoVEs do more than provide a skilled workforce, they “drive change, share practices” and set an example for other VET centres to follow. CoVEs “collaborate to overcome boundaries”. They engage in mentoring and help “sustain ecosystems at a regional level with different kinds of organisations working together to develop and to plan skills”.
Public Private Partnerships play a central role in these new vocational educational ecosystems. “It goes without saying that we cannot achieve excellence in a bubble”, says Mervi Jansson of the Omnia Education Partnership in Finland. For PPPs to be effective, teaching methods and attitudes also need to evolve.
Lev Berman, the Director of the Amal Shimon Peres Entrepreneurship Center in Israel, explained that a teacher’s role is no longer about imparting knowledge or skills; it now involves coaching and mentoring students for workplace success, which requires teachers to develop competences in these areas. Often this encourages teachers to have a business background in the industry they teach; when they do, they can make more meaningful contributions to PPPs.
According to Ms Jansson, CoVEs must achieve a certain degree of autonomy for PPPs to flourish. They need to feel free to work with educational and business partners unencumbered. This autonomy includes financial freedom, the ability to develop curricula and to act entrepreneurially, which essentially means they can provide services for a particular market and/or sell products to a particular market. Skills are, after all, the currency of the 21st century. Many of these 21st century skills will contribute to the green transition through GRETA. To understand the skills VET institutions and businesses require for a successful green transition, developing partnerships is key to ensuring the employability of learners.
For the ETF’s Susanne Nielsen, a “whole of institutional approach” is required to reach green goals in VET. To this end, several strategic partnerships have been put into place with the European Vocational Training Association, Erasmus+, UNESCO UNEVOC, and the African Union. Peer learning initiatives have also been at the heart of this project and have helped drive it forward.
ENE DIGI focuses on the role of CoVEs in the digitalisation of teaching and learning. The technology to make this transition has been available since the early 2000s, but the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online teaching and learning. However, with lockdowns ending, people and educational institutions have returned to traditional ways of learning. For the ETF's Filippo Del Ninno, now is the time to take advantage of the moment when digital education “is on the policy agenda because if we don't, we'll simply lose a big opportunity”.
In the day’s final session, the ETFs Stefan Thomas and Martin Eggert Hansen, Chief Consultant at the Danish Technological Institute, presented a study they are conducting on behalf of the European Commission on the key role CoVEs play in moving the green and digital transitions forward. The objective of the study is to look at centres beyond Europe and its partner countries. Indeed, they “would like to be inspired by centres of vocational excellence in the Americas, Asia and Australia”. The purpose of the study is to identify national policies and practices that have led to centres becoming leaders in “twin transitions”.
Jose Manuel Galvin Arribas, ETF ENE content coordinator, brought day one of the conference to a close by taking questions and comments from participants. A participant in Pakistan, for example, welcomed the idea of sharing revenue with student-workers in VET because of its potential to create better environments for learning skills. The importance of databases like UNESCO’s UNEVOC was also underscored for their part in bridging digital divides. Indeed, having a repository for digital competence frameworks is essential for a successful transition and participants were invited to contact ENE if a digital competence or literacy framework in their country was not in UNEVOC. After all, knowledge and practice sharing is at the heart of excellence – a fitting way to end a morning where peer learning and collaboration took centre stage.
More news will soon follow!
This is the link to the blog on day 2 of the event.
Key messages from the ENE annual conference on 29 November 2022 (Day 1):
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