Inclusiveness in vocational education and training is not a new concept, but the Covid pandemic - and the emergency responses to it to ensure continuity of skills training - has highlighted the key role policies to support inclusive education and lifelong learning have to play in ensuring strong, flexible education systems.
The European Training Foundation will be focusing on this key area of VET at its Corporate Conference in June this year.
The conference - "Building Lifelong Learning Systems: Skills for Green and Inclusive Societies in the Digital Era" - will combine a series of preliminary online workshops with what is hoped to be a physical meeting over two days in Turin, late June.
Cristina Mereuta, a Labour Market Specialist at the ETF, says the Covid pandemic has put a fresh focus on the role a flexible, responsive vocational education and training (VET) system can play in ensuring economic, social and labour market stability at a time of crisis.
"This crisis has changed the approach - before the approach was lets target vulnerable groups… we would talk about ethnic minorities, young people in rural regions with poor access to infrastructure, unemployment - now we notice that a larger proportion of populations are exposed to exclusion, poverty - many sectors like aviation, transport, travel, hospitality have all been severely impacted - so you have larger groups of people exposed to joblessness and poorer access to training."
As a Romanian who came of age as the Communist system tumbled, Cristina believes the experience of Eastern European countries at that time - both those that are now EU members and
ETF partner countries - is a salutary lesson in the importance of managing extreme socio-economic change effectively.
"The transition from centralised to market economy in Eastern Europe, in terms of scale could have been even worse than what we have - definitely our partner countries have a lot of experience behind them and can learn from what worked or did not 10, 20 or 30 years ago, when large cohorts of people were left to cope alone in the face of a crisis without targeted programmes," she adds.
Countries such as Georgia, Romania and Poland, witnessed brain drains, or technically skilled people returning to subsistence agriculture, she notes.
"It was a very inefficient approach, and this is something we should try to avoid now."
Instead, what is needed is a cohesive policy response that focuses on ensuring that VET systems are both given the resources and impetus to be as flexible as possible in opening access to all that need skills training, retraining or upskilling.
"It is more important now to begin shifting the barriers that exist within VET and further education," Cristina notes. "For example, to access further education in many countries you should have completed compulsory education. For those who dropped out of school it means there is practically no chance to follow continous training."
Only by focusing on what barriers are present in a national system can change begin, she believes, adding: "It does not cost a lot to redesign the rules to make education more cohesive and permeable and allow more people to engage in it."
The idea is that policies should be encompassing and reflect the many different pathways open to people to acquire skills, or recognise skills already achieved in various formal and informal settings.
The job of opening up VET and FE to lifelong learning does not have to be left to government or public authorities alone - NGOs and donor organisations can also play a part, with the latter best advised to fund specific services and courses that increase inclusion and participation in training.
This summer's corporate conference is designed to bring experience from the frontline of training provision in focus
through three days of online workshops (Cristina will lead one on inclusion) before senior figures from ministries, donor agencies, NGOs and international organisations such as UNESCO, UNICEF and the ILO, come together for the final two days of the week.
"In the workshops we shall bring in people with more detailed experience of these areas. And look at concrete examples of what works and what does not and why, so as to bring the latest experience to the attention of the senior policymakers," Cristina concludes.
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